nia 


rf''*' 


V  ■'  '■"    '>'' 


***«jisa»jK- 


:i»Pss»f»*A»-'* 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

GIFT  OF 


Mrs,  VJllliam  B.  Ihnro 


\ 


OLD  FRANCE  IN  THE 
NEW  WORLD 

QUEBEC 
IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 


BY 

JAMES    DOUGLAS,    LL.  D. 


SECOND  EDITION 


THE  BURROWS  BROTHERS  CO^H'ANY 

1906 

A//  n'<;;hls  reserved 


Copyright,  1006,  by  James  Dougi-as 


F 


To 
^tr  3lamrs  illar;tl|in*fi0u  IGrnmiui* 

The  Historian  of  Old  Quebec  and  the 
Chronicler  of  New  Quebec 


CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I     Europe  in  America,  or  Old  France  and  O'ld  Eng- 
land in  New  France  and  New  England,       .     .        7 

IT     The  Unsuccessful  Attempt  to  Found  the  Quebec 

Colony  Under  Cartier  and  Roberval,       ...      19 

III  What  Happened  on  the  St.  Lawrence  Between 

1544  and  1608, 51 

IV  Early  Trading  Companies  and  Champlain's  Ap- 

prenticeship, 1608-1 61 2,        65 

V  Quebec  as  a  Trading  Post  Under  de  Monts'  Com- 
pany and   Under  Free  Trade, 86 

VI  Canadian  Adventurers  Under  the  Prince  of  Conde 
and  the  Arrival  of  the  Recollet  Fathers,  161  2 
-  1618,        106 

VII  Champlain  as  Governor  Under  the  Due  de  Mont- 
morency and  the  Creation  of  the  De  Caen 
Trading  Company,  1619-1624 134 

VIII     De  Caen's  Company  and  the  Capture  of  Quebec 

by  Kirke,  1624-1629, 169 

IX     The  Company  of  One  Hundred  Associates,  and 

Quebec  from  1629- 1632,  Under  the  Kirkes     .   201 

X     The  Passing  of   Champlain  and    the  Arrival  of 

the  First  Seigneurs  in  Quebec, 228 

XI  The  Arrival  of  Governor  Montmagny,  and  the 
Establishment  of  the  Ursuline  and  Hospital 
Nuns  at  Quebec,         244 

XII  The  Foundation  of  Ville  Marie  as  a  Rival  to 
Quebec,  and  the  Breaking  out  of  the  Iroquois 
War, 263 

XIII  The  Trading  Company  of  the  Habitants,  the  Con- 
stitution of  1647  and  the  Close  of  Governor 
Montmagny's    Term  of    Othce, 279 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

XIV  Governor  d'Aillebout's  Administration  and  the 
Ne<'"otiation  for  a  Reciprocity  Treaty  with 
New  England, 298 

XV  Gleanings  from  Father  Jerome  Lalemant's  Con- 
tributions to  the  Journal  des  Jesuites,  1645- 
1650, 313 

XVI     The  Administration  of  Governor  de  Lauzon  and 

the  Failure  of  Nepotism, 332 

XVII      A  Drear}'  Chapter  in  the  History  of  the  Colony 

and    City, 345 

XVIII     Governor    d  '  Avaugour's    Administration  —  The 

Earthquake  of  1663, 360 

XIX  The  Dissolution  of  the   Company  of  One   Hun- 

dred   Associates  and    the  Assumption    of    the 
Government   b}"   France, 371 

XX  The  Intendant  Talon,  Commercial  Activity,  and 

Territorial  Expansion, 384 

XXI     Frontenac  as   Governor, 393 

XXII  Arrival  of  Bishop  Laval  as  Bishop  of  Petraea  and 
Vicar  Apostolic,  and  the  Creation  of  a  Parochial 
Clergy, 407 

XXIII  The    Breaking   out  of  the  Contest  Between  the 

Church  and  the  State, 423 

XXIV  Laval  as  Bishop  of  Quebec  and  the  Tithes  Ques- 

tion,      .     .  ;,.,  i-jrf 435 

XXV     The  Brandy  War;  Laval  and  Frontenac  in  Conflict,  450 

XXVI     Quebec  as  the  Seat  of  Clerical  and  Lay  Education,  462 

xxvii  Quebec  as  it  Appeared  at  the  end  of  the  Seven- 
teenth  Century, 490 

XXVIII  The  Struggle  for  the  Fur  Trade  of  Hudson  Bay; 
the  Quebec  Hudson  Bay  Companies,  and  a 
Discussion  on  Colonial  Policy, 515 

XXIX     The  Sequel, 529 

Index, 543 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 

Study  for  Portrait  of  Cardinal   Richelieu,      .      .      Frontispiece 

The  Coast  of  Newfoundland,  as  it  Appeared  to  Jacques 

Cartier  in  May,  1534, 22 

Where  Cartier  on  his  Second  Voyage  Docked  his  Ships,  25 

Site  of  Cartier's  Winter  Quarters  at  Cap  Rouge  on  his 

Third  Voyage, 43 

Statue  of  Champlain  on  the  Site  of  his  Fort,     ....  86 

Champlain's  First  Battle  with  the  Iroquois,      .      ...  88 

Champlain's  Habitation., 88 

Map    of    the    Environs   of    Quebec.     From    Champlain, 

Edition  of  16 13, 93 

The  General  Hospital  on  the  Site   of  the  RecoUet  Mon- 
astery,        142 

Plan  Cadastral  de  1685, 237 

Set  Piece  of  Fireworks  to  Impress  the   Indians,      .      .      .  249 

Portrait  of  Sieur  de  Sillery, 253 

Jesuit  Mission  House  at   Siller}^  now  used  as  an   Office 

Building, 254 

Portrait  of  Madame  de  la  Peltrie, 259 

Portrait  of  Mere   Marie  de  I'lncarnation, 260 

Title    Page    of    Charlevoix's    Life    of     Mere    Marie    de 

I'lncarnation, 261 

The  First   Ursuline   Convent,  Burnt  in  1650,      ....  282 

Portrait  Supposed  to  be  of  M.  Louis  d'Aillebout,        .     .  298 

Plan  of  Upper  and  Lower  Towns  of  Quebec,  1660,    .     .  354 

Villeneuve's  Map  of  Environs  of  Quebec  in  16S8,     .     .  379^ 

Plan  of   Quebec,  made  by  Franquelin  in    1683,  to  W 
trate  a  Scheme  of   Harbor  Improvements, 


PAGE 

Portrait  of  Talon, 384 

Part  of  Franquelin's  Map  of  North  America,  in  which 
Chicago  is  indicated  for  the  First  Time, 387 

Portrait  of  La  Salle, 3^9 

Map  of  the  Lakes  and  Mississippi,  made  probably  about 
1680,  as  the  Site  of  Pere  Meynard's  Death  is  Indicated. 
From  the  Depot  de  la  Marine 390 

Church  of  Notre  Dame  des  Victoires — ^two  views,     .     .   398 

Portrait  of  Bishop  Laval, 416 

Marriage  Certificate,  with  Signatures  of  Bishop  Laval, 
Gov,  de  Courcelle  and  Other  Notables, 436 

Ursuline  Convent,  showing  hne  of  the  \'ieille  Enceinte; 
see  map  opposite  page  504, 442 

Recollet  Church  and  Towers  of  Jesuit  Church  and 
Cathedral, 442 

Jesuit  College  and  Church,  from  Smart's  drawing,  1759?  475 

Interior  of  the  Jesuit  Church  after  the  Siege,  1759,  •  475 

A  Madonna  from  the  Church  of  the  Jesuits  in  Quebec,    .  476 

The  Cathedral  of  Quebec  before  the  Alteration  of  the 
Fagade  in  1843, 482 

The  Basilica.  Entrance  to  the  Seminary  and  part  of  the 
Old  Seminary  Buildings,      . 482 

Bishop  Laval's  Chair,  now  in  the  Quebec  Seminary,  .     .  485 

Quebec,  showing  the  Ciil  de  Sac,  or  Old  Port,  ....  493 

Plan  of  the  Upper  and  Lower  Towns  of  Quebec  in  1670,  495 

Little  Champlain  Street, 497 

Bishop's  Palace,  from  Richard  Short's  drawing,  1759,      .  498 

The  Chapel  of  the  Bishop's  Palace,  where  the  First  House 
of  Assembly  met  in  1792, 498 

Intendant's  Palace,  as  rebuilt  after  the  fire  of  1 713,     .     .   499 

Medal  struck  in  Commemoration  of  Admiral  Phips'  De- 
feat in    1792, 499 


PAGE 

Cross  of  Malta,  from  Montmagny's  Fort,  now  over  the 
side  entranoe  to  the  Chateau  Frontenac, 500 

Elevation  of  the  Chateau  as  rebuilt  by  Frontenac  and  De 
Callieres, 502 

Chateau  as  destroyed  by  fire  in  1834.  From  Hawkins' 
Picture  of  ^icbcc, 502 

View  of  Quebec,  from  a  Map  of  Franquelin,  made  in  1699, 
showing  the  Cavalier  where  the  Citadel  is  now  built. 
From  the  Depot  de  la  Marine, 503 

Picture  of  Quebec,  from  La  Potherie, 

Map  of  Quebec,  published  in  Nurnberg  in  1756,     .     .     .   504 

Illustrated  Map,  to  show  the  relief  sent  to  the  wreck  of 
the  King's  Ship  "Elephant"  in  1729 507 

Map  of  Country  between  the  St.  Lawrence  and  Hudson 
Bay,  made  and  signed  by  Louis  Jolliet,  Nov.  8,  1678,  518 

MS.  Map  of  Country  around  Hudson  Bay.  From  the 
Depot  de  la  Marine, 520 

Map  of  the  Parishes  on  the  St.  Lawrence,  probably 
made  to  illustrate  their  redistribution  by  Vaudreuil. 
From  the  records  of  the  Ministry  of  Foreign  Affairs,   532 

Picture  of  Louisbourg 540 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 

The  sale  of  the  tirst  edition  of  the  book,  and  its  favor- 
able reception  by  the  press  is  the  justification  for  issuing  a 
second.  I  have  in  it  omitted  the  original  documents  bearing 
on  the  history  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Company,  and  have  added 
a  chapter,  giving  a  short  summary  of  Canadian  history  from 
the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century  to  the  conquest.  1  have 
also  copied  some  interesting  maps  and  pictures  from  the  port- 
folio of  reproductions  issued  by  Dufosse,  and  a  better  portrait 
of  Mere  Marie  de  I'lncarnation,  from  Charlevoix's  Life  of 
that  saintly  woman,  than  the  fanciful  likeness  of  a  nun  in 
ecstasy,  which  usually  does  service  as  her  portrait. 

I  must  again  thank  the  Abbe  Scott,  not  only  for  permit- 
ting me  to  copy  maps  from  his  interesting  history  of  the  Par- 
ish of  St.  Foy,  but  even  lending  me  the  block  of  the  portrait 
of  Commander  Sillerv;  The  Burrows  Brothers  Co,  for  being 
willing  to  strike  off  copies  of  some  of  the  interesting  illustra- 
tions made  for  their  edition  of  the  Jesuit  Relations;  Colonel 
Neilson  for  supplying  more  than  one  of  my  illustrations  from 
his  valuable  collection  of  the  Jesuit  memorabilia,  secured  by 
his  great-grandfather  when  the  Jesuit  estates  were  sold  in 
1800;  Mr.  George  lies  for  reading  my  proof-sheets,  and  Mr. 
W.  D.  Le  Sueur  for  not  only  correcting  them,  but  aiding  me 
by  valuable  suggestions.  I  am  also  indebted  to  Dr.  S.  E. 
Dawson,  whose  book  on  the  St.  Lawrence  Basin  treats  with 
minute  detail  the  earlier  steps  of  Canadian  exploration,  for 
correcting  some  errors  in  my  account  of  Cartier's  third  voyage. 

As  already  admitted,  1  cannot  claim  to  have  had  access 
to  unpublished  documents,  but  I  have  tried  to  draw  my  facts 
and  derive  my  impressions  from  original  published  sources, 
rather  than  from  the  many  histories  and  memoirs  written  by 
modern  French  and  English  authors. 


CHAPTER  I. 

Europe  in  America,  or  Old  France  and  Old  England  in 
New  France  and  New  England. 

The  undignified  scramble  in  which  the  great  powers  of  the 
world  are  now  engaged  for  the  possession  of  Africa  and  such 
islands  of  the  sea  as  are  still  occupied  by  their  aboriginal  inhabi- 
tants, resembles  in  many  of  its  aspects  the  race  to  occupy  the  New 
World,  in  which  the  maritime  nations  of  the  sixteenth  century 
competed.  To-day  we  call  conquest  "occupation,"  and  the  con- 
quered area,  with  its  subjugated  people,  "a  sphere  of  influence." 
Yet  the  motives  are  the  same — national  aggrandizement  and  pri- 
vate gain — disguise  them  as  we  may  under  the  cloak  of  a  disin- 
terested desire  to  share  the  blessings  of  our  advanced  civilization 
with  our  less  fortunate  fellow  men.  Our  civil  methods  are  less 
cruel,  and  the  evangelization  of  the  savage  is  not  now  generally 
regarded  as  a  function  of  the  state ;  but  the  actual  wishes  of  the 
original  occupants  of  the  coveted  territories,  whether  they  be  the 
blacks  of  Africa  or  the  tawny  children  of  Hawaii,  are  as  super- 
ciliously disregarded  by  us  as  were  the  rights  of  the  Indians  of 
America  by  the  faithful  children  of  Spain,  or  certain  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  colonists  of  the  North  Atlantic  coast  and  their  descendants. 

Columbus'  first  memorable  voyage  was  promoted  by  Spain 
under  the  spur  of  rivalry  with  Portugal.  This  insignificant 
power,  since  the  days  of  Prince  Henry,  had  been  creeping  round 
the  African  continent,  in  order  to  open  up  trade  by  sea  with 
India  and  with  the  mysterious  empires  of  Cathay  and  Zipango. 
Marco  Polo's  strange  adventures  in  these  remote  regions  had 
remained  so  long — just  two  centuries — unconfirmed  that  his 
story  had  come  to  be  regarded  as  a  myth,  and  the  land  of  the 
Great  Khan  a  mirage.  But  Portugal's  maritime  achievements 
and  subsequent  mercantile  success  had  not  only  converted  a  geo- 
graphical illusion  into  a  reality,  but  had  inspired  into  mediaeval 


8  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

commerce  a  new  spirit,  as  irresistibly  progressive  as  that  with 
which  the  discovery  of  printing  had  reanimated  the  intellectual 
life  of  Europe. 

Just  at  this  juncture  Spain  had  been  fused  into  a  political 
unit  and  had  sprung  into  a  power  of  the  first  magnitude.  The 
marriage  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  had  united  in  national  wed- 
lock the  kingdoms  of  Aragon  and  Castile,  and  had  thus  so  com- 
bined and  concentrated  the  resources  of  Spain  that  she  was  able 
to  drive  the  Moors  from  her  borders.  This  feat  accomplished, 
and  a  strong-  patriotic  spirit  created,  national  pride  could  not 
brook  the  ignominy  of  beholding  Little  Portugal,  a  tiny  strip  on 
the  Atlantic  seaboard  of  the  Iberian  Peninsula,  extending  her 
domain  beyond  the  sea.  Spain  was  thus  not  only  prepared  but 
impelled  to  enter  on  a  career  of  maritime  discovery  and  foreign 
commerce.  Portugal  was  sailing  to  the  Orient  by  an  Eastern 
course.  The  world  is  round  and  therefore  the  same  Orient 
would  be  reached  by  sailing  across  the  sea  towards  the  West. 
Columbus  is  supposed  to  have  taken  counsel  with  the  Florentine 
£eographer  Toscanelli,  who  had  calculated  the  distance  from  the 
Iberian  shore  westward  to  the  Island  of  Zipango  (Japan)  and  to 
Cathay,  the  domain  of  the  Grand  Khan.  ISTo  suspicion  of  inter- 
vening land  seems  to  have  disturbed  his  confidence  or  affected  his 
calculations.  How  curiously  wrong  these  calculations  proved  to 
be,  and  how  stubbornly  confident  he  was  to  the  last  in  main- 
taining his  mistake,  are  not  the  least  interesting  and  pathetic  inci- 
dents of  this  glorious  era  of  geographical  exploration,  inaugurated 
by  Portugal  and  consummated  by  Spain. 

'Columbus  made  land  on  the  Western  Hemisphere  on  the  12th 
of  October,  1492,  and  returned  to  Spain  with  specimens  of  the 
productions  of  his  supposed  Asiatic  discovery.  We  know  that  he 
landed  on  one  of  the  Bahama  Islands,  and  coasted  along  the 
shores  of  Cuba  anH  San  Domingo,  and  that  a  continent  and  thou- 
sands of  miles  of  ocean  lay  between  him  and  the  object  of  his 
search.  But  the  same  confidence  in  his  own  judgmenv  as  has 
characterized  the  illustrious  men,  who  have  achieved  great  deeds 
and  exerted  profound  influence  in  the  world,  prevented  his  correct- 
ing his  own  miscalculations  and  reading  aright  the  plain  facts  of 


AN  AGE  OF  GREAT  NAVIGATORS.  9 

his  own  and  others'  observation.  Nevertheless,  the  very  persistency 
of  the  fallacy  stimiitated  the  adventurers  who,  in  vessels  no  larger 
than  schooners  and  with  mere  handfuls  of  men,  penetrated  fear- 
lessly into  the  recesses  of  a  New  World,  believing  that  it  was  the 
outskirts  of  that  wonderful  Asia,  and  that  through  it  a  waterway 
would  be  discovered  leading  directly  to  the  goal.'"  When  it  came 
to  be  acknowledged  that  America  was  not  China,  and  that  nature 
had  not  cut  a  canal  through  its  equatorial  region,  the  search  for 
a  western  passage  was  shifted  northward.  Even  after  Jacques 
Cartier  had  told  the  story  of  his  winter  sufferings  at  the  head  of 
a  gradually  contracting  gulf,  which  receives  the  waters  of  the  St. 
Lawrence,  the  hope  was  still  cherished  that  this  wide  inland  sea 
and  the  mighty  river  were  a  channel  leading  to  the  tropical  climes 
and  treasures  of  Asia.  The  name  La  Chine,  borne  by  a  village  a 
few  miles  west  of  Montreal,  commemorates  the  fallacy.  After 
Cartier's  time  the  discovery  of  the  Northwest  Passage  continued 
to  be  the  object  of  search  by  many  an  Arctic  explorer,  from 
Frobisher  to  McClure.  All  of  these  sturdy  navigators  endured 
hardships  from  sheer  enthusiasm  for  geographical  discovery ;  for 
it  was  soon  recognized  that  such  a  route,  if  discovered,  would  be 
commercially  valueless. 

Cartier's  thorough  exploration  of  the  St.  Lawrence  from  its 
gulf  to  the  head  of  navigation  at  the  Lachine  Rapids,  and  his 
minute  description  of  the  severe  climate  and  scanty  products  of 
that  remote  region,  not  only  quenched  the  last  hope  of  a  navigable 
ocean  highway  in  the  temperate  zone  direct  to  Asia,  but  deter- 
mined the  limit  beyond  which  private  adventurers  were  not  likely 
to  be  tempted  to  risk  life  and  property  in  search  of  wealth.  His 
second  voyage,  in  1 535-1 536,  may  therefore  be  considered  as  clos- 
ing the  first  great  cycle  of  American  discovery. 

Proud  as  we  may  be  of  our  nineteenth  century  exploits,  they 
sink  into  nothingness  before  the  exuberant  activity  and  mag- 
nificent results  which  rewarded  the  labors  of  the  explorers  of 
America  during  these  brief  forty-two  years,  which  are  without  a 

*  The  popular  idea  that  he  mistook  the  Island  of  Cuba  for  the  main  land  is 
disproved  by  his  letters  to  Saint  Angel,  and  it  seems  probable  that  he  knew,  and 
acknowledged  before  he  died,  that  he  had  discovered  a  new  continent,  though  he 
did  not  appreciate  its  true  geographical  position. 


10  QUEBEC    IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

parallel  in  the  history  of  the  world.  In  our  own  day,  with  steam, 
electricity,  and  a  host  of  mechanical  appliances  and  means  at  our 
command,  with  a  mucii  larger  group  of  commercial  nations 
jostling  one  another  in  the  race  for  new  markets,  and  a  dozen 
religious  sects  competing  for  the  conversion  of  the  millions  of 
heathen  inhabiting  the  Dark  Continent,  Africa  has  not  been 
invaded  with  the  speed  and  thoroughness  with  which  America 
was  ransacked  by  those  little  companies  of  Spanish  cavaliers 
and  other  explorers,  under  the  impulse  of  greed,  glory  and 
fanaticism. 

Judged  by  its  results,  the  discovery  of  America  was  the  most 
momentous  event  that  the  Christian  era  had  witnessed.  That  it 
poured  wealth  into  Europe  and  stimulated  commerce,  was  of 
trilling  importance,  compared  with  the  liberating  influence  which 
the  adjusting  of  political  and  social  life  to  the  new  conditions  of 
a  New  World  was  to  have  on  human  policy  and  opinions.  Yet  it 
hardly  produced  a  ripple  on  the  contemporaneous  thought  and 
speculation  of  Europe.  While  the  maritime  nations  whose 
shores  were  washed  by  the  Atlantic  were  exploring  America, 
the  adventures  of  their  seamen  must  have  been  the  prominent 
topics  of  talk  and  speculation  in  their  seaports.  We  know  that  the 
disturbance  of  the  balance  of  power  which  the  growth  of  Spain 
occasioned  engaged  the  anxious  thoughts  of  European  states- 
men ;  but  the  scanty  and  ill-preserved  records  of  these  daring 
voyagers  are  proof  sufficient  of  the  lethargy  of  the  scholars 
and  thinkers  of  Europe,  a  few  geographers  alone  excepted,  on  this 
all-important  subject. 

It  was  the  period  of  religious  reawakening,  a  reaction  from  the 
decay  of  faith,  which  had  been  the  first  fleeting  consequence  of 
the  revival  of  learning.  Men's  minds  were  diverted  from  physi- 
cal and  philological  research  to  religious  and  metaphysical  dis- 
cussions. One  looks  in  vain,  for  instance,  through  the  letters  of 
the  freest,  broadest,  most  appreciative  thinker  of  that  or  almost  any 
other  age,  Erasmus,  for  any  reflections  on  the  tremendous,  world- 
transforming  events  transpiring  across  the  seas ;  and  one  gives  up 
the  search  with  a  keener  and  sadder  sense  than  ever  of  the  shal- 
lowness of  human  thought,  and  the  narrowness  of  human,  vision. 


THE  REVIVAL  OF  LETTERS.  XI 

The  revival  of  learning  had,  in  Southern  Europe,  exalted 
literature  and  art  to  the  position  religion  had  previously  held, 
and  shaken  men's  faith  in  the  Christian  creed  and  the  code  of 
morals  based  on  it.  The  Vatican  was  as  devoted  to  the  worship 
of  art  as  the  Court  of  the  Medici  in  Florence,  and  with  the  same 
results ;  for  however  completely  a  true  theory  and  love  of  the 
beautiful  may  harmonize  with  Christianity,  unless  sestheticism 
be  kept  rigidl}^  subordinate  to  some  higher  motive,  moral  degen- 
eration seems  to  be  its  speedy  and  inevitable  consequence.  The 
most  ardent  champions  of  the  Papacy  do  not  deny  the  need  that 
existed  of  moral  reform  during  the  Pontificates  immediately  pre- 
ceding and  succeeding  that  of  Leo  X.  The  standard  of  art  was 
never  higher,  nor  its  pursuit  more  lavishly  encouraged.  On  the 
other  hand  the  standard  of  morality  was  perhaps  never  lower, 
or  the  practice  of  vice  more  easily  condoned.  It  was  Italian 
luxury  and  laxity  which  shocked  Martin  Luther,  the  una^sthetic 
Erfurt  monk,  so  seriously  as  to  undermine  his  faith,  It  was 
Italian  corruption,  political,  social  and  religious,  which  excited 
Savonarola  to  sacrifice  his  life  in  the  cause  of  reform ;  and  it  was 
the  hollowness,  hypocrisy,  and  undisguised  license  of  the  Church, 
under  Italian  inspiration  and  example,  wdiich  Erasmus,  himself  a 
curious  example  of  the  contradictory  tendencies  of  the  age,  essayed 
to  stem  by  satire  and  sarcasm.  Yet,  despite  the  wide  depart- 
ure of  ecclesiastical  practice  from  the  simplicity  of  primitive 
Christianity,  the  influence  of  the  Church  was  never  greater  on  the 
political  and  social  life  of  Europe  than  at  this  critical  juncture. 

When  Columbus  sailed  away  from  Palos  in  1492,  Alexander 
VI.  of  the  house  of  Borgia  had  just  been  elevated  to  the  Pontifi- 
cate (Aug.  2nd,  1492).  He  embodied  the  very  genius  of  selfish 
family  aggrandizement.  In  November,  1503,  when  Julius  II., 
the  warrior  Pope,  succeeded  Alexander,  Columbus  was  nearing 
the  end  of  his  fourth  voyage  and  of  his  adventurous  career, 
eating  away  his  heart  on  the  islaixl  of  Jamaica,  the  victim  of 
princely  ingratitude  and  his  owm  extravagant  pretensions. 
Julius,  during  his  pontificate,  succeeded  by  masterly  states- 
craft  in  arraying  the  powers  of  Europe  against  each  other,  with 
the  distinct  purpose  of  advancing  the  power  of  the  Papacy.     But 


12  QUEBEC    IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

as  the  whole  of  Europe  was  involved  in  the  political  and  military 
complications  woven  by  the  astute  and  fearless  politician  and 
soldier  who  sat  on  the  chair  of  St.  Peter,  men's  minds  were  so 
absorbed  by  the  clash  of  arms  and  the  noisier  din  of  theological 
controversy  in  the  opposing  general  councils  of  Pisa  and  the  La- 
teran,  that  such  a  trifling  matter  as  the  discovery  of  a  new  route 
to  the  domains  of  the  Great  Mogul  may  well  have  failed  to  arrest 
the  attention  of  thinkers,  politicians  and  reformers. 

But  a  distinct  and  very  different  type  of  ruler  over  the  Ponti- 
fical State  and  over  the  consciences  of  men  followed  Julius  II. 
Leo  X.  was  the  patron  of  art  and  letters  and  a  true  scion  of  the 
House  of  Medici.  Julius'  statesmanship  had  both  extended  the 
domains  of  the  Church  and  replenished  its  treasury.  To  Leo 
family  aggrandizement  and  political  power  were  subordinate  to 
the  encouragement  of  poetry,  sculpture  and  painting,  and  the 
refinements  of  life.  To  gratify  his  tastes  and  beautify  the  Eter- 
nal City  he  quickly  emptied  the  well-filled  chests  of  Julius  II.  He 
then  invented  and  had  recourse  to  ecclesiastical  methods  of 
raising  revenue,  which  proved  so  repugnant  to  the  sterner  sense  of 
northern  Christianity  as  to  excite  the  Lutheran  revolt  and  array 
all  Europe  in  a  war  of  words  and  weapons.  The  turmoil  was  as 
abhorrent  to  the  Pointiff's  love  of  ease  and  tolerant  temper  as  it 
was  destructive  of  healthy  thought  and  calm  investigation  into 
the  wonderful  facts  being  brought  to  light  in  the  field  of  geogra- 
phical science. 

During  the  quarter  of  a  century,  therefore,  which  intervened 
between  the  discovery  of  America  in  1492  and  Luther's  challenge 
of  the  Pope  in  15 17  the  thought  of  Europe  was  directed 
to  far  other  themes  than  the  doings  of  a  few  Spanish  and  Portu- 
guese adventurers  in  strange  lands  and  among  barbarous  people. 
The  most  notable  allusions  to  the  doings  of  these  daring  navi- 
gators was  by  Sir  Thomas  More,  who  makes  the  fictitious  narrator 
of  the  "Happy  State  of  Utopia,"  Raphael  Hythloday,  a  com- 
panion of  Amerigo  Vespucci  "in  the  three  last  voyages  of  these 
four  that  be  now  in  print  and  already  in  every  man's  hands." 
But  instead  of  finding  food  for  philosophical  thought  in  what 
Vespucci  really  saw  and  narrated,  he  uses  his  story  as  a  mere  peg 
on  which  to  hang  a  philosophical  romance. 


EUROPEAN  RIVALRY  IN  THE  NEW  WORLD.  13 

Sir  Thomas  Mere's  fancies  mal<e  us  wonder  how  different 
might  have  been  the  issues,  had  the  history  of  the  New  World 
been  less  intiinately  interwoven  with  that  of  the  Old.*  As  it 
happened,  despite  the  fresh  impulse  given  to  the  political  pro- 
gress of  the  whole  world  by  America,  European  politics  were,  for 
weal  or  for  woe,  the  compelling  and  controlling  forces  of  Ameri- 
can history  for  more  than  three  centuries.  Had  independent  adven- 
turers such  as  the  semi-mythical  Norsemen,  and  the  still  more 
nebulous  Welshmen,  colonized  part  of  our  Western  Hemisphere, 
and  tempted  others  at  their  own  risk  to  embark  in  a  like  enter- 
prise, the  New  World  might  not  have  fallen  victim  to  the  quarrels 
and  jealousies  of  the  Old.  A  crop  of  indigenous  feuds,  perhaps 
no  less  pernicious,  might  have  sprung  up ;  but  the  immigrant  com- 
munities would  have  developed  into  even  more  distinct  types  than 
the  American  people  of  to-day,  assuming  them  to  have  escaped 
foreign  dictation  and  the  influence  of  inherited  hatreds  and 
prejudices.  It  was  only  the  sturdy  sailors  of  the  Northlands,  or 
the  venturesome  merchants  of  the  Genoese  and  Venetian  repub- 
lics, who  could  possibly  have  founded  by  individual  or  co-opera- 
tive efforts  such  independent  communities.  The  latter  possessed 
the  skill  and  daring  necessary  to  do  it ;  for  not  only  did  the  Italian 
republics  contribute  to  this  great  epoch  of  maritime  discovery 
such  men  as  Columbus,  Vespucci,  and  others  of  its  most  skillful 
mariners,  but  it  was  a  Florentine  geographer,  Toscanelli,  whose 
theoretical  calculations  were  used  by  Columbus  as  arguments  in 
support  of  his  scheme  of  Western  exploration,  and  by  whose 
hypothetical  charts  he  sailed.  But  to  escape  European  influence, 
and  to  develop  an  original  civilization,  America  should  have  been 
discovered  long  before  the  fifteenth  or  sixteenth  century ;  for, 
when  that  era  arrived,  European  interests  had  become  so  inter- 
mingled that  no  power  could  gain  an  advantage  without  exciting 
the  jealousy  of  friends  and  foes.  At  that  time,  also,  scattered 
independent  American  communities  could  not  have  defended 
themselves  or  maintained  their  autonomy. 

The  three  first  intruders,  as  colonists  of  the  Western  soli- 

•  Lamarck  expressed  the  unfortunate  fact  in  the  aphorism:  Le  globe  est  la 
propriete  de  I'homme;  le  nouveau  continent,  I'Amerique,  est  la  propriete  de  I'Europe. 


14  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

tudes,  were  the  direct  agents  of  three  European  powers — Spain, 
Portugal,  and  France.  The  English  colonists  who  followed  were 
not  sent  forth  by  their  Government,  but  they  recognized  fealty  to 
it  in  a  certain  sense.  As  a  consequence,  the  condition  of  Euro- 
pean politics  determined  in  every  case  the  fate  of  America. 

While  the  Spanish  initiative  in  the  discovery  of  America  was 
the  consequence  of  her  sudden  elevation  to  the  rank  of  one  of 
the  Great  Powers  of  Europe,  the  maintenance  and  extension  of 
that  position,  especially  when  the  Spanish  King  became  also  Em- 
peror of  Germany,  involved  her  in  such  costly  wars  that  she  was 
compelled  to  use  her  American  conquests  primarily  as  a  source 
of  treasure,  partly  won  from  the  soil,  and  partly  extorted  from 
the  unfortunate  natives  by  cruel  and  oppressive  measures.  As  the 
Spanish  immigrants  were  not  agriculturists,  and  therefore  not, 
properly  speaking,  colonists,  official  tyranny,  bureaucratic  pride 
and  political  dishonesty  became  almost  of  necessity  the  features 
of  Spanish  rule.  The  vices  of  Old  Spain  were  transplanted  to 
the  soil  of  America.  They  at  once  took  deep  root  and  have  borne 
bitter  fruit  even  to  our  own  day. 

The  supreme  control  claimed  by  and  accorded  to  the  Church 
was  evinced  in  the  Bull  of  Alexander  VI.  promulgated  the  year 
after  the  discovery,  which  allotted  to  Spain  all  lands  west  of 
a  line  drawn  from  North  to  South  one  hundred  leagues  west 
of  the  Azores  and  Cape  Verde  Islands.  In  the  following  year 
Spain  and  Portugal,  by  the  treaty  of  Tordesillas,  agreed  that  the 
line  of  demarcation  between  their  future  possessions  should  be 
three  hundred  and  seventy  leagues  west  of  the  Cape  Verde  Islands, 
and  some  years  subsequently  the  Pope  confirmed  the  treaty.  Por- 
tugal therefore  elected  of  necessity  as  her  field  of  discovery  the 
ocean  to  the  north  and  south  of  the  West  India  Islands ;  but  the 
southern  lands  alone  were  those  which  she  ultimately  occupied. 
Cabral,  in  1500,  sailed  for  India,  but  driven  on  to  the  coast  of 
Brazil,  planted  the  flag  of  Portugal  within  the  limit  of  Portugal's 
area,  and  founded  Brazil — the  only  colony  Portugal  ever  main- 
tained on  the  American  continent.  Cabral's  discovery  was  fol- 
lowed by  those  of  other  navigators  in  these  southern  seas,  notably 
by  the  explorations  described  by  Amerigo  Vespucci,  whose  letters, 


THE  AWAKliNING  OF  FRANCE.  1 5 

if  not  his  seamanship,  won  for  him  the  honor  of  conferring  his 
name  on  the  New  Continent.  These  tempting  tropical  lands, 
whose  luxuriant  vegetation  fired  the  imagination  with  visions 
of  wealth  beneath  the  soil  as  prolific  as  the  foliage  which 
clothed  it,  stimulated  Portugal  to  claim  her  heritage  to  the 
north  as  well  as  to  the  south  of  the  equator,  for  the  voy- 
ages of  the  Cabots  had  proved  that,  in  that  direction  also,  the 
land  bulged  eastward,  so  far  as  to  throw  it  within  the  Portuguese 
sphere  of  occupation.  She  therefore  sent  forth  two  expeditions, 
one  in  1500  and  another  in  1501,  under  the  Cortereals.  But 
fortunately  these  navigators  confirmed  the  Cabots'  account  of  the 
repellent  aspect  of  the  country,  and  repressed  all  further  enthusi- 
asm for  exploration  of  a  region  where  blustering  winds  made  the 
sailor's  life  irksome,  and  a  sterile  coast,  clad  for  many  weary 
months  in  snow  and  ice,  ofi'ered  the  explorer  but  scant  induce- 
ment to  land.  North  America  was  thus  relieved  from  Portu- 
guese domination.  What  extent  of  the  shore  line  of  our  Northern 
Continent  John  and  Sebastian  Cabot,  and  Caspar  and  Miguel 
Cortercal  explored,  it  is  beyond  our  province  to  discuss;  but  it 
is  abundantly  clear  from  the  failure  of  two  such  active  mari- 
time powers  as  Portugal  and  England,  in  whose  interest  the  navi- 
gators sailed,  to  hold  or  extend  their  discoveries,  that  little  or  no 
value  was  attached  to  what  they  had  found.  It  is  presumable  that 
neither  entered  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence,  as  otherwise  England  or 
Portugal  would  have  sought  by  that  channel  a  route  to  Cathay,  and 
not  have  left  to  France  the  honor  of  making,  a  third  of  a  century 
later,  the  most  famous  of  all  the  great  voyages  for  the  discovery  of 
a  Northwest  Passage. 

When  the  New  World  was  revealed,  France  had  recently 
thrown  off  the  trammels  of  feudalism.  Louis  XL  had  made  him- 
self really  King  of  France,  which  was  then  territorially  almost 
as  we  know  it  to-day.  F)y  cunning  and  by  force,  Burgundy, 
Franche  Comte,  Artois,  Provence,  Anjou,  Roussillon  had,  in  whole 
or  in  part,  been  brought  luidcr  his  rule.  But  France  then  and 
for  several  subsequent  reigns  had  no  navy,  and  but  trifling  for- 
eign trade  and  commerce.  The  duty  of  the  last  monarchs  of  the 
Valois  line  was  royally  fulfilled  by  maintaining  control  of  con- 


l6  QUEBEC    IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

tiguous  territory,  and  creating  a  French  nation.  Unfortunately, 
their  ambitions  phinged  them  into  a  succession  of  ItaHan  wars, 
which  strained  their  resources  ahiiost  to  the  breaking  point 
Nevertheless,  one  benefit  these  foreign  wars  did  confer.  It  was 
from  jealousy  and  laudable  rivalry  of  his  life-long  foe  in  the 
Italian  struggle,  Charles  V.,  that  Francis  I.  was  impelled  to 
engage  in  maritime  enterprises,  and  to  seize  his  share  of  that  New 
World,  which  was  pouring  gold  and  silver  by  the  shipload  into 
the  Spanish  treasury.  "Ah,  well,"  this  pleasure-loving  but 
shrewd  monarch  is  credited  with  saying,  "the  Kings  of  Spain 
and  Portugal  are  dividing  coolly  the  New  World  between  them 
without  offering  their  poor  brother  a  share.  I  should  like  to  see 
the  clause  of  Adam's  will  which  bequeathed  to  them  this  vast 
heritage." 

Charles  V.  used  his  ships  as  fighting  machines  in  the  Medi- 
terranean, as  well  as  for  purposes  of  commerce  in  the  Spanish 
Main  and  the  Pacific;  and  Francis  I.  was  too  acute  a  soldier  and 
politician  not  to  appreciate  the  immense  advantage  which  this 
possession  of  sea  power  gave  the  Emperor  in  his  Italian  cam- 
paign. The  imperative  necessity  therefore  lay  on  him  of  provid- 
ing France  wath  a  navy,  and  of  encouraging  private  maritime 
enterprises.  His  hatred  of  Charles  V.  induced  him  to  resort  to 
disgraceful  shifts ;  but  it  was  the  commercial  treaty  and  political 
alliance  which  he  made  with  the  Turks  under  Soliman  II.,  in 
order  to  thwart  the  noble  efforts  of  the  brilliant  and  much  harassed 
Emperor,  who  had  just  freed  the  Mediterranean  from  the  scourge 
of  Tunisian  and  Algerian  pirates,  that  awakened  France  to  the 
value  and  i)Ossibility  of  embarking  successfully  in  foreign  trade. 
To  the  same  stimulus  must  be  attributed  the  sending  forth  of 
one  or  two  expeditions  to  America  under  ^^errazano,  as  well  as 
those  under  Jacques  Cartier  and  Roberval. 

When  France  attempted  to  govern  in  the  New  World  she 
imitated  Spain  more  or  less  in  form,  but  not  in  spirit.  The 
climatic  conditions  of  the  territory  she  occupied,  as  well  as  the 
natural  temperament  of  her  colonists  and  the  classes  from  which 
they  were  drawn,  produced  a  distinct  type  of  colony.  The  home 
Government  designed  to  engraft  the  French  bureaucratic  system 


FRENCH  AND  ENGLISH   COLONIES. 


^Z 


on  the  colonial  stock,  and  even  transferred  to  the  forests  of  Canada 
all  that  remained  of  the  feudal  customs  and  land  tenure.  Her 
colonial  policy  was  to  duplicate  as  nearly  as  possible  Old  France 
in  New  France,  and  to  check  spontaneous  colonial  development 
in  strange  and  untried  directions. 

The  English  colonies,  on  the  other  hand,  having  been  founded 
as  private  enterprises,  some  of  them  under  the  protection 
of  Royal  charters,  were  freer  than  those  of  Spain,  Portugal,  and 
France  to  work  out,  amidst  their  novel  environments,  an  original 
system  of  government,  and  to  form  distinct  social  habits  and 
customs ;  and  therefore  though  moulded  on  ancestral  models,  they 
were  not  direct  reflections  of  European  originals.  Even  the  Eng- 
lish colonies,  notwithstanding  their  greater  independence  of  Eu- 
ropean control,  were  more  or  less  affected  by  every  complication 
of  Old  World  politics.  The  successive  wars  between  France, 
Holland,  and  England  were  waged  on  both  sides  of  the  At- 
lantic, and  are  referred  to  in  colonial  annals  as  King  James' 
War,  King  William's  War,  and  Queen  Anne's  War.  Finally  it 
was  as  a  European  war  measure  that  France  lent  her  aid  to  the 
revolting  English  colonies,  and  it  was  equally  through  English 
sympathy  and  her  direct  assistance,  that  the  Spanish  colonies 
were  enabled  to  throw  off  the  yoke  of  Spanish  control. 

^  Furthermore,  American  life  was  from  the  first  inoculated 
with  the  ecclesiastical  and  theological  views  of  Europe  in  all 
their  absoluteness  and  their  acrimony.  The  monastic  orders  car- 
ried into  New  Spain  their  narrow  creed  and  the  Inquisition, 
though  the  Dominicans,  who  used  so  mercilessly  and  relentlessly 
this  terrible  engine  for  the  suppression  of  heresy  on  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic,  were  the  staunchest  protectors  the  poor  Indians 
had  against  their  oppressors.  In  New  France  the  pretensions  of 
the  Church  were  as  vehemently  asserted  as  in  Old  ;  and  the  quarrel 
between  Church  and  State  was  even  more  bitterly  waged.  In 
New  England  and  in  Virginia  the  contention  between  Puritan  and 
Prelatist  was  as  rife  as  in  the  old  home  from  which  the  Round- 
heads and  the  Cavaliers  had  fled. 

Thus  on  the  warp  of  European  politics  was  woven  the  web 
of  American  history.     And  it  has  so  happened  that  almost  as 


'ig  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

soon  as  European  control  was  thrown  off,  and  the  American 
communities  might  have  shaped  out  for  themselves  even  more 
distinct  types  of  political  and  social  life  than  they  have  done, 
there  set  in  that  great  revolution  in  economics,  through  the 
agency  of  steam  and  electricity,  which  is  so  rapidly  knitting  the 
world  into  a  commercial  whole  and  creating  for  it  a  common 
civilization.  This  revolution  is  rubbing  down,  if  not  obliterating, 
idiosyncrasies  of  national  character.  Through  other  causes,  there- 
fore, than  political  control,  America  is  still  responding  to  the 
impulses  of  European  life.  On  the  other  hand  Europe  is  and  has 
been  vitally  moved  by  America.  But  so  intricate  are  the  direct  and 
reflex  waves  of  influence,  sweeping  back  and  fro  across  the  sea, 
that  it  will  become  more  and  more  difficult  to  trace  the  origin  of 
that  unifying  process,  now  in  full  progress.  The  study  can,  how- 
ever, best  be  made  where  the  range  of  observation  is  limited.  And 
certainly  there  is  no  community  on  this  continent  whose  history  so 
vividly  illustrates  as  that  of  the  City  of  Quebec,  the  passage  from 
feudalism  to  modernism ;  from  government  by  autocracy  to  gov- 
ernment by  popular  vote ;  from  feudal  bureaucracy  to  English 
colonial  rule,  and  then  colonial  independence ;  from  ecclesiastical 
domination  to  ecclesiastical  subordination.  There  also  can  be  stu- 
died the  racial  peculiarities  of  two  of  the  great  peoples  of  the  mod- 
ern world,  passing  from  hostile  antagonism  into  friendly  rivalry, 
but  evincing  all  the  persistence  of  racial  habits  and  institutions.'"' 
In  the  17th  Century,  to  which  the  following  study  will  be 
confined,  we  shall  see  how  trade  monopolies  strangled  the  spon- 
taneous efforts  of  the  colonists  towards  industrial  and  commercial 
enterprise,  and  drove  the  more  adventurous  spirits  into  illegal  pur- 
suits of  gain ;  what  a  blighting  eft'ect  the  refusal  to  the  people  of 
all  participation  in  government  had  upon  civic  and  national 
growth ;  and  how  vain  the  attempt  must  ever  be  to  reconcile  eccle- 
siastical and  civil  authority,  where  representatives  of  each  are 
combined  in  the  administration  of  government.  In  the  little  town 
of  Quebec  all  these  experiments  were  tried,  all  these  forces 
were  in  operation  ;  and  the  results  can  there  be  seen  and  studied  to 
better  purpose  than  on  a  larger  field  and  under  more  complicated 
conditions. 


CHAPTER  II. 

The  Unsuccessful  Attempt  to  Found  the  Quebec  Colony 
Under  Cartier  and  Roberval. 

Cartier's  First  Voyage. 

Though  Cortereal's  and  Cabot's  reports  on  the  sterile  north  had 
not  attracted  colonists  or  treasure  seekers,  they  did  stimulate  the 
fisher  folk  of  Portugal,  France  and  Spain  to  extend  their  quest  for 
cod  from  Iceland  to  Labrador  and  Newfoundland  across  the  Great 
Cod  Banks,  and  even  to  penetrate  the  Gulf  of  the  St.  Law- 
rence. Exactly  how  far  they  ventured  is  a  subject  of  dis- 
pute. Charlevoix  tells  us  that  as  early  as  1504  Basque,  Norman 
and  British  sailors  fished  for  cod  on  the  Great  Banks  along  the 
shores  of  Canada,  and  that  in  1507  Jean  Denys  of  Honfleur  made 
a  map  of  the  Gulf.  He  then  repeats  the  stories  of  exploration 
of  the  upper  river  by  Denys,  Velasco  and  Aubert.  But  these 
vague  traditions  are  of  little  value.  The  actual  limits  of  previous 
exploration  can  probably  be  gathered  inferentially,  yet  with  more 
reliability,  from  Cartier's  narrative.  Certain  localities  on  the 
east  coast  of  Newfoundland  and  Labrador  are  by  him  referred 
to  by  names  already  assigned.  But  when  he  sails  away  south- 
ward from  Port  Brest,  on  the  Labrador  coast,  and  makes  the 
northwest  coast  of  Newfoundland  ;  and  subsequently  when  he  ex- 
plores the  Magdalen  Islands,  and  the  shore  of  New  Brunswick,  he 
himself  assigns  names  to  most  of  the  prominent  geographical 
features.  The  inference  is  that  the  fishermen  knew  the  shores 
of  Newfoundland,  the  Straits  of  Belle  Isle,  and  the  Labrador  coast 
for  a  short  distance  to  the  west,  but  that  neither  curiosity,  nor 
adventure,  nor  the  search  for  treasure,  had  induced  them  to  jour- 
ney further  than  the  abundance  of  cod  and  the  pursuit  of  their 
calling  tempted  them.  From  his  own  town  of  St.  Malo,  as  well 
as  from  other  ports  of  Normandy,  Brittany,  Poitou,  from  the 
Basque  Provmces  of  Spain,  and  from  Portugal,  hardy  seamen  had 


a3  QUEDEC    IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

year  after  year,  for  decades  past,  struck  fearlessly  out  into  the 
angry  Atlantic ;  had  tossed  about  while  fishing-  on  the  banks,  and, 
like  their  descendants  of  to-day,  made  the  Newfoundland  coast  in 
search  of  bait  and  to  cure  their  catch.  All  they  knew  he  knew 
by  hearsay,  and  perhaps,  as  rumor  says,  from  personal  experience 
during  two  fishing  voyages;  consequently  he  was  familiar  with 
all  the  known  localities :  with  the  precautions  to  be  taken  for  secur- 
ing the  ships  in  winter,  and  in  the  breaking  up  of  the  ice  in  the 
spring ;  and  knew  what  stores  should  be  laid  in  for  barter  with  the 
natives.  On  the  other  hand,  the  migratory  Indians,  who  had  for 
over  a  generation  traded  with  the  fishermen  of  the  Gulf,  had  either 
carried  or  disseminated  by  rumor  so  full  a  description  of  the  white 
men  and  their  ways  throughout  the  whole  valley  of  the  St.  Law- 
rence that,  when  Cartier  ascended  it,  he  excited  neither  the  fear 
nor  the  astonishment  with  which  the  Spaniards  were  received  in 
their  early  exploratory  expeditions.  These  aboriginal  hunters  may 
also  have  interchanged  with  the  Indians  of  Stadacona  and  Hoche- 
laga  the  seeds  of  those  plants,  indigenous  to  Europe,  which  Cartier 
subsequently  found  cultivated  by  those  more  advanced  tribes. 

There  is  therefore  no  substantial  reason  to  rob  Cartier  of  the 
honor  of  being  the  first  explorer  from  across  the  Atlantic  to  trace 
the  course  of  the  St.  Lawrence  from  the  sea  to  the  head  of  its  navi- 
gable waters.  On  the  other  hand,  he  was  not,  like  Columbus  or 
Cabot,  steering  for  unknown,  though  conjectured  land.  Thus  the 
landfall  made  by  Cartier  on  his  first  voyage,  the  Cap  de  Bonne 
Vue,  was  a  headland  as  well  known  to  navigators  then  as  it  is 
to-day ;  as  were  also  the  headlands  and  inlets  of  the  southeast 
coast  of  Labrador  within  the  Straits  of  Belle  Isle.  But  all  beyond 
was  mystery  and  a  void  which  the  imagination  could  fill  with 
demons  or  with  gold,  as  people's  fancy  impelled  them.  Perhaps 
Cartier  thought  the  expansion  of  water  within  the  narrow  Straits 
— the  Golfe  de  Chateaux  of  Cartier  and  the  early  fishermen — was 
part  of  the  great  sea  of  Verrazano,  the  Marc  Indicmn,  which  a 
then  recent  map,  that  of  the  Vesconte  di  Maggiolo,  1527,  showed 
as  occupying  the  space  which  the  central  part  of  our  northern  con- 
tinent fills,  separated  from  the  Atlantic  by  but  a  fringe  of  seaboard. 
This  sea  Cartier  may  have  imagined  he  had  already  entered,  once 


C ARTIER  S  FIRST  VOYAGE.  21 

he  had  seen  the  Gulf  expand  beyond  the  range  of  sight  within  the 
Straits;  for  this  sea  of  undefined  hmits  Verrazano  had  laid  down 
on  his  map,  as  he  supposed  lie  had  seen  it  beyond  the  low  sandy 
hillocks  of  the  Carolina  coast.  Cartier,  therefore,  instead  of  keep- 
ing along  the  Labrador  coast,  sailed  southward,  hoping  to  get 
away  from  the  ice  and  cold,  and  to  navigate  open  waters  through 
a  more  genial  climate  to  the  Orient,  but  nevertheless  through  that 
great  river  of  which  the  Indians  had  probably  given  the  French 
fishermen  some  vague  conception. 

Of  Cartier  himself  we  know  almost  as  little  as  of  Columbus. 
In  those  days  the  genealogies  of  men  of  humble  birth  and  calling, 
although  they  might  have  steered  the  whole  world  into  unknown 
waters,  were  deemed  unworthy  of  record.  All  that  is  certain  is 
that  the  future  sailor  was  born  at  St.  Malo,  probably  in  1491, 
and  thus  came  into  the  world  in  the  dawn  of  the  day  which 
was  to  usher  in  that  new  era  of  commercial  progress  with 
wdiich  his  name  was  to  be  so  honorably  associated.  By  na- 
ture he  was  one  of  those  restless  spirits  whom  the  past  cannot 
content ;  who  are  not  satisfied  to  plod  along  the  beaten  paths 
and  solid  ground  which  their  fathers  had  trodden  before  them; 
but  who  look  impatiently  onward  and  outward  over  the  vast  ocean, 
which  they  imagine  wraps  within  its  encircling  embrace  every 
mystery  which  the  horizon  conceals.  We  may  therefore  accept 
the  probable,  if  unverified,  testimony,  that  before  he  was  forty 
he  had  made  three  voyages  across  the  North  Atlantic,  and  ex- 
perienced the  keen  excitements  of  the  fisherman's  life,  and  had, 
in  the  employ  either  of  Portugal,  or  of  Francis  I.,  taken  part 
in  an  expedition  to  Brazil.  The  inference  is  that  he  had  learned, 
not  only  the  rougher  tasks  and  functions  of  the  sailor's  calling, 
but  had  been  educated  in  its  more  recondite  secrets,  for  the 
general  accuracy  of  his  observations,  as  set  down  on  his  three 
voyages,  bespeaks  the  scientific  navigator.  Had  he  not  indeed 
possessed  a  knowledge  of  the  higher  branches  of  the  seaman's 
profession  he  would  not  have  been  selected  to  command  the  expe- 
dition which,  on  the  20th  of  April,  1534,  in  two  ships  of  about 
60  tons  each  manned  by  sixty-one  men,  sailed  away  from  Saint 
Malo    after   Messere   Charles'  de  Moiiy,    sieur    de    la   Milleraye, 


22  OUECF.C    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

and  Vice  Admiral  of  France,  had  administered  an  oath  to  the 
captain,  sailing  masters  and  sailors,  binding  them  to  comport 
themselves  as  true  and  faithful  men  in  the  service  of  the  most 
Christian  King  under  his  command. 

That  first  voyage  in  its  incidents  does  not  concern  us,  except  in 
so  far  as  it  afforded  preparatory  experience  for  the  second.  The 
commentators  and  critics  have  not  agreed  in  their  identification  of 
all  the  geographical  spots  described  by  Cartier,  but  it  is  generally 
considered  that,  after  exploring  the  Labrador  coast  for  about  one 
hundred  and  fifty  miles  to  the  west  of  the  Port  of  Brest,  he  re- 
tnrued  to  that  well-known  port;  then  struck  across  to  the  west 
coast  of  Newfoundland,  and  skirted  its  rocky  inlets  and  bold 
headlands  till  abreast  of  the  Magdalen  Islands ;  threaded  his  way 
between  these,  and  still  proceeded  westward,  hoping  perhaps  to 
reach  the  more  open  waters  of  the  Mare  Indicum.  Taking  this 
course  he  sighted,  instead.  Prince  Edward  Island  and  the  New 
Brunswick  coast.  This  he  cautiously  followed  to  the  north  into 
the  Bay  des  Chaleurs,  to  which  he  gave  the  name  that  still  clings 
to  it.  Not  finding  a  passage  to  the  west  from  the  head  of  this  gulf 
or  bay,  he  seems  to  have  skirted  the  coast  somewhat  further ;  when, 
still  failing  to  find  the  outlet  he  was  in  search  of,  he  steered  north- 
erly, and  passed  to  east  or  west  of  Anticosti  before  regaining  the 
Labrador  coast.  Twice  he  speaks  of  looking  for  the  passage. 
Was  he  really  looking  for  an  opening  into  Verrazano's  sea  to 
the  southwest?  At  any  rate,  after  crossing,  probably  unwittingly, 
the  mouth  of  the  river,  he  reached  the  Labrador  coast  and  fol- 
lowed it  to  the  east ;  though  in  crossing  the  head  of  the  Gulf  he 
traversed  the  open  water,  which  he  was  looking  for,  towards  the 
west.  Then  he  follow-ed  the  Labrador  coast  to  the  east,  retracing 
his  own  steps  for  part  of  the  way  until  he  reached  Blanc  Sablon 
at  the  south  end  of  the  Straits  of  Belle  Isle.  Thence  he  sailed  to 
France  without  further  adventure,  and  with  favoring  winds 
reached  Saint  Malo  on  September  5th.  As  did  Columbus  on  his 
first  voyage,  so  Cartier  took  to  Europe,  as  proof  of  the  value — 
and  very  doubtful  proof  it  was — of  his  discoveries,  two  Indian 
boys,  who,  it  was  asserted,  were  willingly  entrusted  to  him  by 
their  father,  a  chief  of  the  last  district  explored  on  the  south 


CARTIEU  S  SECOND  VOYAGE.  23 

shore,  called  Honguedo,  probably  Gaspe  Basin.  The  youthful 
natives  played  a  notable  part  in  Cartier's  second  voyage,  and  it 
was  probably  from  their  information  that  he  was  then  enabled  to 
sail  straight  into  the  St.  Lawrence.  The  writer  of  the  second 
voyage  admits  that  they  had  been  forcibly  taken  and  carried  away 
against  their  will,  and  the  will  of  their  parents. 

Cartier's  Second  Voyage. 

On  Cartier's  second  voyage  stormy  weather  scattered  the  fleet, 
which  was  not  reunited  until  all  three  ships  reached  the  rendezvous 
at  Cape  Blanc  Sablon.  The  coast  to  the  west  of  this  was  more  or 
less  familiar  as  far  as  Cape  Thiennot,  which  was  recognized  as 
having  been  the  scene  of  a  friendly  interview  with  the  savages  on 
the  first  voyage.  Coasting  some  twenty  miles  further  they 
anchored  in  Saint  Nicholas  Harbor,  which  Father  Charlevoix 
says  is  the  only  spot  which  retained  its  name  to  his  day,  and  then 
entered  the  maze  of  the  Mingan  Islands.  At  this  point  he  learns 
from  the  two  Indian  lads,  whom  he  had  captured  the  year  before, 
that  Gaspe  Basin  lay  to  the  south,  and  that  the  intervening  land 
was  an  island — the  same  island  they  had  partly  explored  on  the 
first  voyage  and  named  Assumption.  The  youths  also  told  them 
of  Ihe  great  river  ahead,  and  of  the  Bourgade  of  Stadacona,  and 
evinced  an  accurate  knowledge  of  the  geography  of  the  upper  St. 
Lawrence.  Cartier  discovered  subsequently  that  his  captives 
were  of  the  same  tribe  as  the  Indians  of  Stadacona,  and  that  one 
of  Taignoagny's  brothers  was  actually  there. 

They  coasted  along  the  low  sandy  shores  of  Anticosti  to  its 
northwest  extremity,  saw  the  low  lands  of  the  southern  shore  of 
the  St.  Lawrence,  and  remarked  the  bolder  character  of  the 
northern ;  returned  to  it,  and  followed  it  to  a  group  of  islands 
(Seven  Islands),  evidently  hoping  to  find  a  passage  to  the  north, 
even  after  they  had  distinctly  understood  that  a  large  river  flowed 
from  the  west.  The  idea  of  a  great  sea,  on  which  floated  as  islands 
all  the  land  which  they  had  hitherto  explored  to  the  north  and 
south,  seems  to  have  possessed  Cartier's  mind.  It  was  expressed, 
as  we  have  seen,  on  the  map  of  1527;  was  confirmed  doubtless  by 
the  rumors  of  the  great  inland  lakes,  which  had  beguiled  the 


24  QUEBEC    IN    TliE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

Spanish  adventurers  far  to  the  South,  and  now  tinctured  all  Car- 
tier's  theories.  Columbus  before  he  died  may  have  doubted 
whether  America  was  part  of  the  Asiatic  continent,  and  Cartier's 
mistaken  suppositions  were  partially  corrected  after  he  had  reach- 
ed Hochelaga,  and  had  seen  the  Lachine  Rapids,  and  learned  the 
precise  distance  of  the  great  lakes,  as  we  read  in  the  letter  of  his 
nephew,  Jacques  Noel,  in  1587.  Before  he  died  he  would  probably 
have  revised  the  account  of  his  own  voyages  as  given  by  his 
historiographer,  and  eliminated  the  mention  of  Canada  as  an  island 
which  so  bewildered  Father  Charlevoix.  According  to  Lescarbot, 
Francis  I.,  in  his  commission  to  Jacques  Cartier,  prior  to  the  third 
voyage,  speaks  of  Cartier  as  having  discovered  the  large  countries 
of  Canada  and  Hochelaga,  making  a  part  of  Asia  in  the  west 
They  were,  therefore,  probably  supposed  to  be  islands  floating  in 
the  great  sea  of  Verrazano  {Mare  Indicmn).  The  delusion  of  a 
northwest  passage,  as  we  know,  died  very  hard. 

We  need  not  follow  Cartier  step  by  step  up  the  river.     As  he 

approached  his  destination,  the  distinguishing  landmarks  are  more 

correctly   described   and   more   easily    identified :    the    Saguenay, 

the  Isle  aux  Coudres   (Hazel  Nut  Island),  which  Cartier  calls 

"the  beginning  of  Canada,"  the  Isle  de  Bacchus  or  Orleans,  and  at 

last  "a  very  fine  and  pleasant  bay,"  which  could  be  none  other  than 

that  glorious   expanse  of  water,   with   its   beautiful   setting  of 

island,  fertile  shore,  frowning  cliffs  and  towering  mountains — the 

Harbor  of  Quebec.     He  saw  the  promontory  of  Quebec  first  from 

one  of  Chief  Donnacona's  canoes,  and  on  the  fourteenth  moored 

his  ship  between  the  sheltering  banks  of  the  little  river  Lievre  or 

the  brook  Saint  Michel,  a  mile  or  so  above  the  mouth  of  the  St. 

Charles,  into  which  his  ships  had  been  carried  by  the  ascending 

tide.     His  fleet  had  sailed  out  of  the  harbor  of  St.  Malo  on  the 

9th  of  May,  met  at  the  rendezvous  of  Blanc  Sablon,  within  the 

Straits  of  Belle  Isle,  on  the  6th  of  July,  and  now  on  the  8th  of 

September,  escorted  by  a  fleet  of  canoes,  the  first  European  came 

within  sight  of  Stadacona.     Cartier's  first  care  upon  approaching 

what  he  evidently  regarded  as  the  end  of  his  voyage  was  to  find 

safe  winter  quarters  for  his  three  small  vessels.     This  he  did  on 

the  14th  of  September  in  the  River  St.  Charles,  which  he  named 


u 


CARTIER  S  SECOND    VOYAGE.  i'g 

in  honor  of  the  saint  day — the  St.  Croix.  His  three  ships  were 
small  craft,  manned  by  crews  of  one  hundred  and  ten  men ,  the 
very  signatures  of  seventy- three  of  whom  have  been  preserved. 
We  can  calculate  the  size  of  the  three  ships,  the  "Hermine,"  the 
"Petite  Hermine,"  and  the  "Emerillon,"  by  accepting  the  displace- 
ment of  Columbus'  ship,  the  "Santa  Maria,"  as  212  tons  and  its 
length  as  being  84  feet  by  26  feet  beam.  The  "Grand  Hermine," 
of  106  tons,  must  have  been  67  feet  long  by  23  feet  beam;  the 
"Petite  Hermine,"  of  60  tons,  must  have  been  57  feet  by  17  feet 
beam,  and  the  "Emerillon,"  of  40  tons,  must  have  been  48  feet  by 
15  feet  beam.* 

The  old  mistake  of  supposing  that  Cartier  anchored  his  ships 
and  stowed  them  for  winter  quarters  near  the  village  of  St. 
Croix  on  the  St.  Lawrence,  some  miles  above  Quebec,  is  hardly 
worth  contradicting.  It  is  certain  that,  within  a  mile  or  so  of 
the  mouth  of  the  St.  Charles,  a  name  substituted  for  that  of  St. 
Croix  by  the  Recollet  Fathers  in  honor  of  Charles  des  Boii^s, 
father  of  the  mission  of  that  order  in  Canada,  Cartier  made  prep- 
arations to  pass  the  winter  with  his  ships.  At  about  half  a  mile 
from  the  mouth  of  the  river  its  banks  approach,  and  at  this  point 
there  was  in  early  days  a  ford,  and  later  a  bridge  of  boats.  The 
present  Dorchester  Bridge,  connecting  Bridge  street  in  the  sub- 
urb of  St.  Roch  with  the  Beauport  Road,  crosses  the  embouchure 
of  the  river  at  about  500  feet  below  the  old  ford,  which  was  at  the 
foot  of  Crown  Street,  near  the  Marine  General  Hospital.  Above 
the  ford  the  river  describes  a  letter  S,  forming  two  long  loops. 
At  the  turn  of  the  first  loop  two  brooks,  the  St.  Michel  and  the 
Lairet,  have  cut  their  channels  through  the  alluvial  mud  into  the 
St.  Charles.  The  tide  rises  to  a  depth  of  ten  feet  over  the  muddy 
bed  of  the  St.  Michel,  and  here,  therefore,  between  its  protect- 
ing banks,  where,  during  low  tide,  the  ships  would  rest  safely  on 
the  soft,  level,  muddy  bottom,  and  where  neither  the  flood  nor  the 
ice  floes  would  endanger  their  safety,  was  just  such  a  refuge  as 

*  The  linear  dimensions — viz.,  length  and  beam — are  in  proportion  of  the 
cube  root  of  the  tonnage  for  similar  models.  The  builders'  old  measure — B.  O.  M. — 
for  determining  tonnage,  is  to  multiply  the  length,  minus  three-fourths  of  the 
breadth,  V^y  the  breadth,  the  product  by  one-half  the  breadth,  and  then  to  divide 
by  94 ;  the  quotient  is  the  tonnage. 


26  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

Cartier  sought.  That  this  was  the  scene  of  his  first  winter's  suf- 
fering and  disappointment  is  by  some  supposed  to  be  confirmed 
by  the  finding,  in  1843,  by  Mr.  Joseph  Hamel,  the  City  Surveyor, 
of  the  timbers  of  a  vessel  of  about  the  size  of  the  "Petite  Her- 
mine,"  just  protruding  from  the  mud  at  about  200  feet  from  the 
mouth  of  the  creek.  A  division  was  made  of  what  was  recovered 
of  her  hull  and  tackle  between  the  museum  of  the  Literary  and 
Historical  Society  of  Quebec  and  that  of  St.  Alalo.  The  portion 
assigned  to  St.  Malo  is  still  to  be  seen  there,  but  that  deposited 
with  the  Literary  and  Historical  Society  of  Quebec  was  destroyed, 
with  nearly  the  whole  of  the  Society's  collection,  in  the  fire  of  the 
Parliament  Building  in  1854.  As  we  shall  see,  the  "Petite  Her- 
mine"  had  to  be  abandoned  in  the  spring  for  lack  of  sailors  to 
man  her,  twenty-five  of  Carticr's  little  company  having  succumbed 
to  scurvy  and  privation  during  the  weary  and  distressful  winter 
months. 

After  first  caring  for  his  ships,  like  the  good  sailor  that  he 
was,  Cartier  nuist  have  looked  with  uneasy  foreboding  on  the 
scene  surrounding  him.  He  was  encircled  by  swamp  covered 
with  a  dense  growth  of  dogwood,  spruce  and  cedar,  except  where 
here  and  there  a  patch  of  swampy  meadow  refused  to  nourish 
even  brushwood.  The  swamp  extended  southward  to  the 
base  of  the  rocky  ridge,  which  he  could  see  terminated  in  the 
high  bluff  upon  which  Donnacona's  stockade  was  built.  The  low 
lodges  were  of  course  hidden  among  the  big  trees  covermg 
the  ridge.  The  same  swampy  ground  stretched  back  some  dis- 
tance from  the  banks  of  both  the  St.  Charles  and  the  St.  Law- 
rence in  distressing  monotony,  but  with  the  advantage  of  en- 
abling him  to  see  the  approach  of  the  Indians  from  almost  every 
direction.  To  the  north  the  land  was  covered  with  a  dense  forest 
of  pine  and  hardwood,  as  it  rose  with  a  gentle  slope  to  the  base 
of  the  Laurentide  Range.  It  was  mid-September,  and  then,  as 
now,  the  maples  were  clad  in  their  gorgeous  autumnal  tints, 
in  comparison  with  which  the  tropical  forest,  with  all  its  vaunted 
wealth  of  foliage  and  flowers,  is  colorless.  But  this  very  splendor, 
due  tc  a  touch  of  the  early  frost,  must  have  warned  him  to 
return,  while  there  was  yet  time,  and  join  the  fishing  fleet  on 


CARTIER  S    SECOND    VOYAGE.  2/ 

its  homeward  voN'age  to  Old  France.  The  temptation  may  have 
been  strong,  but  the  enthusiasm  of  the  explorer  and  the  resolu- 
tion of  the  commander  not  to  retreat  until  he  had  fulfilled  his 
commission,  for  the  execution  of  which  he  had  laid  in  fifteen 
months'  provisions,  overcame  the  prudence  of  the  navigator, 
The  advancement  of  the  season,  therefore,  merely  stimulated  his 
impatience  to  explore  the  river  above  Stadacona. 

■  When  Cartier  first  entered  the  river,  in  the  middle  of  August, 
his  captive  Indians  told  him  that  they  were  ascending  to  the 
great  river  of  Hochelaga,  and  on  the  way  to  Canada,  and  that 
the  river  would  gradually  diminish  in  width  as  Canada  was  ap- 
proached, that  its  waters  would  become  fresh,  but  that  its  source 
was  so  distant  that  no  one  to  their  knowledge  had  ever  reached 
it.  Hochelaga,  consequently,  became  the  possible  goal  of  his 
expedition,  and  as  soon  as  his  two  large  ships  were  safely  moored, 
he  began  making  preparations  for  this  further  exploration,  for 
which  he  solicited  the  assistance  of  Donnacona  and  his  tribesmen. 
Then  commenced  the  first  contest  in  northern  latitudes  between 
the  will  of  the  European  and  the  wit  and  the  finesse  of  the  red- 
man.  It  was  the  first,  but  not  the  last,  and  the  victory  was  then, 
as  ever  afterward,  on  the  side  of  the  man  with  the  superior  tools, 
whether  ships,  weapons  of  war,  or  railroads. 

The  two  captive  lads  now  appear  as  prominent  characters  in 
the  drama.  On  the  approach  of  the  ships  to  the  east  end  of  the 
island  of  Orleans  they  had  left  the  ships  with  their  compatriots 
after  appeasing  the  fears  of  the  Indians.  Their  superior  knowl- 
edge, despite  their  youth,  must  have  given  them  a  prominent  place 
in  the  council  chamber  of  the  tribe.  They  had  spent  eight  and  a 
half  months  in  France,  and  though  ignorant  of  the  French  lan- 
guage and  puzzled  by  much  they  saw,  they  had  learned  to  appre- 
ciate the  power  of  their  captors,  and  to  doubt  the  unselfishness 
of  their  motives  in  thus  intruding  on  their  ancestral  domain. 
They  had  noticed  how  very  different  the  methods  of  trade  pursued 
in  France  were  from  the  simple  system  of  barter  with  which  they 
had  previously  been  familiar,  and  they  had,  perhaps  dimh\  per- 
ceived the  value  attached  to  money,  and  the  trials  and  hardships 
endured  in  earning  it.    They  had  seen  the  Malouin  fishing  smacks 


28        QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

returning  with  the  Terreneuviers,  some  weeks  after  their  own  ar- 
rival in  France,  for  it  is  the  wind  of  St.  Frangois  (Oct.  4th)  that 
wafts  them  back  to  their  homes.  And  two  months  or  so  before  they 
themselves  had  sailed,  they  had  seen  these  same  fisher  folk  bid 
good-bye  to  the  sad,  white-capped  matrons  and  little  ones,  and 
sail  away  on  their  perilous  venture  under  the  protection  of  the 
Holy  \'lrgin,  the  "Star  of  the  Sea,"  before  whose  image  on  the 
great  gate  of  St.  Malo  they  offered  their  orisons.  These  fisher- 
men presumably  combined  with  their  maritime  vocation  that  of 
the  trader,  and  brought  back  peltries  and  seal  skins  bought 
from  the  Labrador  and  Newfoundland  Indians,  and  at  times  a 
native  or  two.  Taignoagny  and  Domagaya  watched  all  this  with 
Indian  stolidity,  seemingly  indifferent  to  everything  around  them ; 
but  they  must  have  shrewdly  decided  either  that  trade  with  the 
French  was  a  boon  to  be  coveted,  and  therefore  to  be  secured, 
exclusively,  if  possible,  by  themselves  and  their  friends ; 
or  else  that  there  was  danger  to  be  apprehended  from^ 
these  white  men,  their  ships,  their  cannon  and  their  seeming 
numbers.  When,  therefore,  their  advice  was  asked  in  the  Council 
Lodge  of  Stadacona,  it  must  have  been  given  in  favor  of  dis- 
couraging all  further  exploration  and  aggressiveness  by  these 
strangers,  w'hether  regarded  as  welcome  guests  or  feared  as 
future  foes.  Whatever  the  motive,  the  decision  reached  was 
that  Cartier  must  be  prevented  from  ascending  the  river  to 
Hochelaga.  The  effusive  friendliness  of  the  first  greeting  was 
therefore  succeeded  by  reserve.  They  would  not  approach  the 
ships  until  Cartier  had  convinced  them  of  his  friendly  intentions. 
They  then  objected  to  the  display  of  weapons,  whose  dangerous 
character  they  had  been  informed  of,  but  had  not  yet  expe- 
rienced. They  professed  to  be  appeased  only  when  Cartier,  ap- 
pealing to  his  quondam  captives,  explained  that  gentlemen  in 
France  always  carried  their  arms.  Before  separating  the  Cap- 
American  Indians. 


caktiek's  second  voyage.  29 

The  next  day,  the  i6th  of  September,  Cartier  and  his  crew 
were  busy  makino-  the  two  larger  ships  safe  within  the  harbor 
and  river,  the  smallest  being  left  in  the  stream  for  the  Hochelaga 
trip,  when  Donnacona  and  tlie  two  captives,  with  ten  or  twelve 
chiefs,  came  on  board,  while  a  multitude  of  500  savages  and  men, 
women  and  children  surrounded  the  ship.  The  chiefs  were 
feasted  and  the  usual  presents  gi\'en,  after  which  the  subject 
uppermost  in  the  minds  of  all — the  journey  to  Hochelaga — was 
broached.  Taignoagny  explained  that  Donnacona  had  forbidden 
him  to  accompany  Cartier,  as  the  river  was  dangerous;  but  Car- 
tier  repeated  his  determination  to  go  alone,  even  if  Taignoagny 
should  not  accompany  him,  his  instructions  being  to  ascend  the 
river,  and  that  therefore  as  far  as  Hochelaga  he  would  go.  The 
Indians  returned  discomfited  to  their  lodges. 

On  the  17th  new  tactics  were  resorted  to  by  the  savages. 
A  girl  and  two  boys,  one  of  them  said  to  be  the  brother  of 
Taignoagny,  were  given  Cartier  as  a  bribe  to  induce  him  not  to 
proceed.  In  return  Cartier  gave  the  Indians  two  swords  and 
other  trifles,  but  expressed  anew  his  determination  to  see  Hoche- 
laga. Failing  by  bribery,  the  sorely  puzzled  savages  essayed 
fear.  Two  Indians  disguised  with  horns  were  sent  as  emissaries 
of  the  great  god  Cudragny  to  warn  Cartier  of  the  perils  of  ice 
and  snow  which  would  beset  him  on  his  western  journey ;  but 
Cartier  retorted  that  his  priest  had  consulted  Jesus,  and  that 
they  were  promised  fine  weather,  with  which  assurance  the  In- 
dians were  obliged  to  be  satisfied.  So  the  farce  finished  by  Taig- 
noagny telling  Cartier  that  he  must  proceed  alone,  as  they  were 
forbidden  by  Donnacona  to  accompany  him. 

The  priest,  whose  intercourse  with  the  Deity  was  used  as  a 
counterpoise  to  the  methods  of  the  Indian  god  Cudragny,  was 
probably  as  fictitious  as  the  revelations  which  the  red  men  al- 
leged to  have  been  received  from  the  latter.  Nowhere  else  is  his 
presence  referred  to.  In  the  following  winter,  during  the  terrible 
visitation  of  scurvy,  the  narrative  tells  us  that  "our  Captain,  in 
view  of  the  sickness  and  suffering,  commanded  all  to  pray,  and 
had  an  image  of  the  A'irgin  exposed  on  a  tree  at  an  arrow  flight 


20  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

from  the  fort,  and  he  ordered  mass  to  be  said  the  following  Sun- 
day, when  all  who  could  go,  both  sound  and  sick,  went  in  proces- 
sion, singing  the  Penitential  Psalms  and  the  Litany,  and  praying 
the  Virgin  to  intercede  with  the  child  Jesus  for  us.  Having  said 
mass,  our  Captain  vowed  to  make  a  pilgrimage  to  Notre  Dame  de 
la  Roquemadon  if  God  would  permit  him  to  return  to  France." 
If  priests  had  been  in  the  company,  mass  would  not  have  been  an 
extraordinary  ceremony,  and  Cartier  would  not  have  himself  offi- 
ciated. If  mass  was  celebrated  the  consecration  of  the  elements 
must,  of  course,  have  been  omitted.  On  another  occasion  Cartier 
is  said  to  have  explained  to  the  Indians  through  Taignoagny, 
when  they  wished  to  be  baptized,  that  he  would  return,  and 
would  then  bring  priests  and  the  holy  oil  with  which  the  sacra- 
ment could  be  efficaciously  administered.  This  they  believed,  as 
several  young  people  had  witnessed  the  ceremony  in  Brittany. 
Who  were  these  several  youths?  If  the  passage  is  correctly 
reported,  it  would  confirm  the  previous  impression  that  the  inter- 
course of  the  French  with  the  Indians  of  the  Gulf  and  of  the 
Gulf  Indians  v.-ith  those  of  the  river  had  been  intimate.  The 
Abbe  Faillon,  in  his  "Colonic  Francaise  en  Canada,"  argues  that 
Dom  Guillaume  le  Breton,  the  Captain  of  the  ship  "Emer- 
illon,"  and  Dom  Anthoine  were  priests,  as  the  title  "Dom"  is 
given  to  priests  of  the  Order  of  Saint  Benoit.  But  a  priest  would 
not  likely  be  in  command  of  a  ship,  and,  had  they  been  ecclesias- 
tics, their  names  would  have  been  among  the  nobles  at  the  head 
of  the  list  of  Cartier's  crew  instead  of  near  the  foot.  When  Car- 
tier  made  his  first  and  second  voyages,  despite  the  pious  formu- 
las used,  religious  propagandism  had  not  acquired  the  importance 
it  attained  when  the  Lutheran  revolt  had  become  more  wide- 
spread, and  Catholicism,  under  the  stimulus  of  Loyola,  had 
awakened  to  the  necessity  of  reform. 

All  being  ready,  Cartier  set  sail  without  his  Indian  guides  to 
explore  the  river  above  Stadacona.  The  principal  geographical 
features  of  the  St.  Lawrence  between  Quebec  and  Montreal  are 
so  much  more  distinctly  marked,  and  the  scenery  is  so  much  more 
contracted,  that  the  identification  of  localities  is  easier  than  when 
we  are  dealing  with  Cartier's  itinerary  of  the  Gulf.    The  accuracy 


CARTIER  S  SECOND  VOYAGE. 


31 


of  his  description  of  the  upper  river  confirms  the  honesty 
of  the  narrative  of  the  whole  voyage  and  attests  iiis  powers 
of  judicious  observation.  Both  banks  of  the  river  above 
Stadacona  seemed  to  be  peopled  by  Indians  who  supplied  him 
with  fish  and  muskrats,  and  evinced  no  hostility.  On  the  28th, 
nine  days  after  starting-,  they  entered  Lake  St.  Peter,  and  being 
unable  to  find  a  deep  channel  out  of  it,  Cartier  left  the  "Emer- 
illon"  in  charge  of  ten  of  her  crew,  and  proceeded  in  the  boat 
with  twenty-six  sailors,  and  w^ith  the  gentlemen  adventurers,  and 
with  Jalobert,  the  Captain  of  the  "Petite  Hermine,"  and  the 
same  Guillaume  le  Breton  whoni  Faillon,  on  the  ground  of  his 
being  styled  Doni,  supposes  to  have  been  a  priest.  On  October  2nd 
they  reached  Hochelaga,  where  one  thousand  savages  were  gath- 
ered on  the  banks  to  greet  them  "with  all  the  fervor  of  a  parent 
welcoming  a  child."  They  belonged  to  the  Bourgade  of  Hoche- 
laga, the  situation  of  which  Cartier  describes  with  much  detail. 
Cartier  gave  to  the  mountain  above  the  river,  at  whose  base  the 
stockaded  village  of  Hochelaga  then  lay,  and  over  which  the  com- 
mercial metropolis  of  Canada  is  now  rapidly  spreading,  the  name 
it  still  bears.  And  for  once  the  matter-of-fact  narrator  breaks 
almost  into  enthusiasm,  as  he  describes  the  glorious  view  which 
opened  upon  them  as  they  ascended  the  mountain.  But  it  must 
have  been  a  disappointment  to  see  the  broad  navigable  river  con- 
tract at  the  foaming  rapids  of  Lachine,  and  hard  to  abandon  all 
hope,  however  faint  it  may  have  been  growing,  that  perchance  it 
afforded  a  navigable  waterway  to  China. 

On  October  2nd  Cartier,  his  noble  companions,  and  his 
twenty-six  men  took  leave  of  their  savage  friends.  The  Indians 
were  sorry  to  see  vanish  these  wonderful  beings,  with  their  metal 
weapons  and  ornaments,  their  firc-crcating  arquebuses,  their 
curious  musical  instruments,  and  the  magical  control  over  disease, 
which,  as  medicine  men,  they  seemed  to  possess  and  which  they 
practised  so  generously.  As  their  power  to  hurt  or  to  help  must 
have  seemed  irresistible,  the  desire  to  retain  them  as  allies  must 
have  been  no  less  strong  than  their  dread  of  them  as  foes.  The 
descent  by  the  swift  current  above  tidewater  was  easy.  On  the 
4th  they  rejoined  the  "Emerillon"  on  Lake  St.  Peter,  and  found 


32  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

that  their  companions  had  not  been  molested.  They  then 
returned  to  Stadacona,  stopping  only  to  explore  the  St.  Mau- 
rice, which  they  thought  might  lead  them  into  that  mysteri- 
ous Saguenay  country,  whence  they  understood  came  the  cop- 
per ornaments  and  weapons  the  Indians  set  such  store  by.  This 
strange  confusion  between  the  Saguenay  region  and  the  Upper 
Lake  Region  runs  throughout  the  whole  narrative.  On  the  nth 
of  October  they  rejoined  their  fellows  on  the  little  affluent  of  the 
St.  Croix,  and  found  that  during  their  absence  they  had  built  a 
stockaded  fort  and  mounted  on  it  the  artillery  from  their  ships. 
Champlain  in  the  next  century  found  the  remains  of  the  chimney 
near  the  little  Lairet  creek,  and  spoke  of  it  as  marking  the  site 
of  this  the  first  European  habitation  on  these  shores. 

Chief  Donnacona,  accompanied  as  usual  by  Taignoagny  and 
Domagaya,  made  haste  to  pay  a  visit  of  ceremony  and  to  invite 
Cartier  to  his  poor  abode.  The  invitation  was  accepted,  and  the 
visit  paid  on  the  following  day,  when  Cartier,  the  chief  pilot 
of  his  fleet,  and  fifty  sailors  marched  half  a  league  to  the  Dcmciir- 
ancc  of  Stadacona,  which  was  probably  on  the  promontory  over- 
looking the  two  rivers.  The  savages  received  him  with  the  cus- 
tomary dances,  and  exhibited,  as  proofs  of  their  valor,  five  dried 
scalps.  They  admitted  at  the  same  time  that  one  of  their  war 
parties  had  been  almost  totally  exterminated  two  years  pre- 
viously on  the  St.  Lawrence  by  the  Toudamans — a  tribe  no  com- 
mentator has  been  able  to  identify,  though  Lescarbot  says  that 
it  occupied  the  country  opposite  the  Batiscan,  and  in  that  case 
between  the  Bourgades  of  Stadacona  and  Hochelaga.  If  so, 
it  was  probably  occupied  by  an  offshoot  of  the  Iroquois  stock, 
among  whose  branches  hostilities  and  jealousy  were  already 
brewing.  What  Donnacona  had  in  view  was  probably  to  initiate 
a  negotiation  for  an  offensive  alliance  against  their  enemies.  As 
Cartier  did  not  respond,  the  coolness  apparent  in  the  subsequent 
conduct  of  the  Indians  may  have  dated  from  this  ceremonial  visit. 
Cartier  devotes  several  chapters  to  the  religious  beliefs  and 
some  of  the  manners  and  customs  of  the  Indians  of  Stadacona, 
but  his  observations  were  probably  as  imperfect  as  his  deductions 
w'ere  certainly  incorrect.     L^nfortunately,  he  gives  no  such  vivid 


CARTIER  S  SFXOND  VOYAGE.  33 

description  of  their  stockades  and  lodges  as  that  which  enabled 
us  to  identify  the  Hochelaga  Indians  as  a  branch  of  the  Huron 
stock.     He  dilates  on  their  avidity  for  Christian  conversion,  and 
their  desire  for  baptism,  which,  owing  to  their  polygamous  and 
otherwise  immoral  habits,  he  was  forced  to  refuse  them.     All  of 
which,  considering  the  abstruseness  of  the  subject,  and  his  ig- 
norance of  the  language,  compels  us  to  believe  that  he  must  have 
drawn  largely  on  his  imagination,  unless  his  two  captives  had, 
during  their  few  months'  enforced  residence  in  France,  become 
adept  interpreters.     It  is  not  fair  to  assign  the  religious  aspira- 
tions and  efforts  of  the  early  explorers  entirely  to  hypocritical 
motives,  or  to  suppose  their  interest  in  the  cause  of  religion  assum- 
ed merely  to  stinudate  the  zeal  of  French  supporters,  and,  in  Car- 
tier's  case,  forward  plans  for  another  expedition.    For  it  must  not 
be  forgotten  that,  despite  the  laxity  of  morals  in  Europe,  there  still 
remained  some  of  the  power  of  mediaeval  Christianity,  and  that 
license  in  conduct  and  spasms  of  emotional  piety  were  then,  as  in 
other  times  and  places,  strangely  and  incongruously  associated. 
The  life  and  character  of  Francis  I.,  Cartier's  patron,  afford  a 
glaring  exemplification  of  this  inconsistency.     Cartier  interlarded 
his  narratives  with  a  due  allowance  of  traveller's  tales  about  pig- 
mies and  one-legged  men  and  other  monstrosities.     Even  so  un- 
critical a  commentator  as  Father  Charlevoix  expresses  the  opinion 
that  these  marvels  are  due  to  defective  observation,  or  a  too  excited 
imagination,  or  to  the  misunderstanding  and  exaggeration  of  the 
reports  of  others.     They  do  not  detract,  however,  from  the  in- 
trinsic credibility  of  the  narrative  in  regard  to  matters  of  direct 
observation. 

Through  the  machinations  of  his  quondam  captives,  so  Cartier 
believed,  the  alienation  of  the  Indians  of  Stadacona,  or,  as  he 
expresses  it,  of  Canada,  assumed  so  grave  and  menacing  an  aspect 
that,  fearing  hostilities,  he  protected  his  fort  by  a  deep  ditch,  a 
drawbridge,  and  a  stronger  palisade.  He  tried  to  frighten  the 
savages  by  blowing  trumpets,  and  he  made  the  utmost  parade  of 
his  forces  by  changing  watches.  But  no  attack  was  made,  and 
gradually  the  friendly  relations  were  restored.  There  was  jeal- 
ousy among  the  natives  themselves,  as  we  may  judge  from  the 


24         QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

fact  that  the  warning  he  received  of  the  suspected  treachery  of 
Donnacona  was  given  by  the  chief  of  the  neighboring  village 
of  Hagonchenda.  Where  that  village  was  he  does  not 
tell  us,  but  he  says  that  in  the  district  of  Canada — that  is,  west  of 
Isle  aux  Coudres — there  were  several  communities  living  in  vil- 
lages not  stockaded.  His  description  carries  us  back  to 
those  eras  and  scenes  in  prehistoric  America  when  the  aborigines 
were  struggling  to  rise  out  of  abject  savagery  and  work  out 
an  original  system  of  civilization,  only  to  be  checked  in  its  de- 
velopment in  North  America  among  the  Iroquois,  and  summarily 
strangled  in  Mexico  and  Peru,  by  coming  into  contact  with  for- 
eign and  uncongenial  races. 

"To  the  west  of  the  Island  of  Orleans,"  Cartier  tells  us,  "there 
is  a  basin  which  forms  a  natural  harbor,  into  which  the  river 
flows  in  a  swaft,  deep  current  between  high  bluffs,  and  the  soil  on 
the  shore  is  rich  and  cultivated.  Here  is  built  the  town  of  Stada- 
cona  and  the  lodges  of  Chief  Donnacona,  and  of  the  two  lads  we 
captured  on  our  first  voyage.  But  before  reaching  Stadacona 
four  villages  are  passed,  those  of  the  Araste,  the  Starnatau,  the 
Tailla,  who  have  built  on  a  hiUside,  and  the  Satadiu."  As  that  of 
the  Tailla  is  distinguished  as  being  built  on  a  hill,  we  may  presume 
that  it  alone  stood  on  the  south  shore,  the  others  on  the  Beauport 
Flats.  "Then  Stadacona  is  reached,  beneath  whose  high  bluffs 
towards  the  north  is  the  river  and  harbor  of  St.  Croix,  where  our 
ships  lay  high  and  dry  from  the  i8th  of  September  to  the  i6th  of 
May,  1536.  This  place  passed,  the  villages  of  Tequenondabi  and 
Hochalai  are  reached,  the  former  on  high  land,  the  latter  on  a 
plain."  All  we  know  is  that  Hochalai  was  above  Cap  Rouge. 
On  his  third  voyage  in  1540  Cartier  started  on  what  he  intended 
to  be  a  preliminary  survey  of  the  St.  Lawrence  above  the  Lachine 
Rapids.  After  leaving  their  winter  quarters  at  Cap  Rouge,  the 
narrative  says,  "they  proceeded  up  the  river,  and  the  Captain  paid 
a  visit  to  the  Lord  of  Hochalai,  whose  abode  is  between  Canada 
and  Hochelaga."  The  resemblance  of  the  name  Hochelaga  and 
Hochalai  stamps  tlieir  inhabitants  as  belonging  to  Iroquois  stock, 
if  not  to  the  Huron  tribe. 

Whoever  they  were  that  inhabited  the  stretch  of  the  Great 


cartier's  second  voyage.  ^g. 

River  near  Quebec,  its  topographical  features  made  it  as  con- 
spicuously important  to  the  Indian  economist  and  strategist  as  it 
has  proved  to  be  ever  since.  The  flats  of  the  north  shore  and  of 
the  valley  of  the  St.  Charles  are  the  first  large  areas  of  low  cul- 
tivable land  on  that  side  as  you  ascend  the  river  from  the  Atlantic. 
They  were,  therefore,  selected  as  the  most  suitable  site  for  a  group 
of  villages,  while  the  heights  of  Quebec  and  Levis,  contracting  the 
river  which  flows  between,  gave  the  position  strategical  value 
as  a  vantage  ground  from  which  to  watch  the  movements  of 
friends  or  foes.  Here,  therefore,  on  one  of  the  few  cleared  and 
cultivated  spots  in  the  boundless  wilderness  which  had  been  for- 
ever, and  was  still,  slumbering  under  the  oppressive  silence  of 
almost  unbroken  forest,  there  were  associated  in  communities  men 
and  women  in  sufficient  numbers  and  sufficiently  advanced  in  art 
and  intelligence  to  co-operate  for  peace  and  war,  storing  in  sum- 
mer provisions  for  the  winter,  tilling  the  soil  with  small  wooden 
implements  not  bigger  than  a  sword,  and  raising  corn,  pumpkins 
and  tobacco,  which  latter  Cartier  and  his  crew  essayed  to  smoke 
but  did  not  relish.  When,  therefore,  the  first  white  men  ascended 
the  river  they  found  at  and  around  Quebec  a  population  which 
occupied  a  higher  plane  in  the  scale  of  civilization  than  the  wan- 
dering, hunting  tribes  around  them.  This  spot,  therefore,  so  con- 
spicuous in  later  days,  had  an  unwritten  history  of  its  own,  but 
its  annals  are  not  recorded  in  even  archaeological  remains. 

The  first  chapter  of  the  authentic  story  is  a  very  sad  one. 
Soon  after  the  return  of  the  exploring  party  winter  set  in.  The 
ice  grew  thicker  and  thicker  on  the  St.  Charles,  and  snow  fell 
deeper  and  deeper  over  the  whole  country.  Fears  must  have 
seized  the  little  company,  almost  the  only  European  denizens  on 
the  whole  continent,  lest  they  should  be  buried  in  the  beautiful, 
glittering  masses  which  everywhere  enveloped  the  world  in  their 
soft  folds.  It  was  so  relentlessly  cold  that  it  must  have  seemed 
impossible  that  summer  heat  could  ever  again  unlock  the  streams 
and  melt  the  great  drifts,  which  piled  higher  and  higher  over  their 
ships  and  grew  up  into  a  wall  whose  combing  summit  towered 
above  the  stockade  which  they  had  erected  as  a  defence  against 
their  suspicious  neighbors.    And  as  the  December  days  shortened 


^5  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

new  horrors  faced  them.  Disease  broke  out  in  the  Bourgade  of 
Stadacona — perhaps  an  epidemic  caught  from  the  Europeans, 
which  found  a  congenial  nidus  in  the  Indian  constitution  and  car- 
ried off  fifty  victims.  Cartier  forbade  all  intercourse  between 
his  men  and  the  stricken  savages,  but  ere  long  a  new  and  terrible 
disease  developed  in  his  own  company.  From  his  description 
there  can  be  no  reasonable  doubt  that  scurvy  had  broken  out  in 
his  crew,  probably  occasioned  by  the  cessation  of  all  traffic  in  fish 
and  fresh  meats  with  the  natives.  There  is  no  proof  that  it  w^as 
the  same  disease  which  had  ravaged  the  Indian  village  itself. 
Scurvy  was,  no  doubt,  prevalent  during  seasons  of  scarcity  in 
Stadacona.  The  Indians  suffered  from  it,  and  they  also  knew  its 
cure ;  but  it  usually  did  not  break  out  so  early  in  the  winter  as 
December,  for  the  summer  supplies,  despite  the  characteristic  im- 
providence of  the  natives,  would  hardly  then  be  exhausted,  and  the 
St.  Charles  would  still  be  swarming  with  tommy-cod.  The  disease 
among  Cartier's  men  made  such  havoc  that  by  the  middle  of 
February,  out  of  the  two  hundred  and  ten  composing  the  crews 
of  the  three  ships,  there  were  only  ten  sound  sailors.  Eight  had 
died,  and  the  lives  of  fifty  more  were  despaired  of.  One  and 
another  continued  to  fall  ill,  until  there  were  but  three  strong 
enough  to  assist  their  helpless  mates.  Before  the  death  list  was 
closed  twenty-five  had  died  and  lay  unburied,  stiff  and  stark,  con* 
cealed  in  the  snow  drifts.  In  their  despair,  they  began  to 
fear  lest  the  savages,  becoming  aware  of  their  weakness, 
should  attack  and  overwhelm  them.  To  avert  this  con- 
jectured danger  and  hide  their  helplessness,  Cartier  drove 
them  from  the  ship  whenever  they  appeared,  and  thus,  in 
his  ignorance,  deprived  himself  of  the  only  available  remedy 
— fresh  food  and  vegetable  diet.  At  length,  one  day,  meeting 
Domagaya,  who  had  been  himself  a  suft'erer,  he  ascertained  that 
the  medicine  by  which  the  savage  had  been  cured  was  a  decoction 
of  the  boughs  of  annedda — probably  the  balsam.  Two  squaws 
were  sent  to  collect  the  remedy  and  to  make  the  necessary  infusion, 
under  the  beneficial  influence  of  which  health  speedily  returned. 
The  balsam,  therefore,  became  a  standard  remedv  for  scurvy. 
Colston,  in  describing  the  hardships  of  the  whalers  of  1612  in 


CARTIER  S  SECOND  VOYAGE 


37 


Newfoundland,  tells  us  that  divers  died  of  scurvy,  whereto  turnips 
were  an  excellent  remedy — not  less  efficacious  than  "Cartier's 
tree"  (Prowse's  "History  of  Newfoundland,"  p.  128). 

Thus  this  first  long  winter  spent  by  Europeans  on  the 
upper  St.  Lawrence  wore  away  amidst  distress  and  despair. 
But  they  were  brave  men,  and  bravely  bore  their  terrible 
hardships.  There  is  not  a  hint  of  insubordination.  February,  the 
shortest  month  of  the  year,  is,  in  this  semi-arctic  region,  the 
longest  and  dreariest ;  but  in  March  the  great  change  comes. 
Every  Canadian  can  appreciate  the  revival  of  hope  and  courage 
as  winter  merged  into  spring,  and  snow  and  ice  vanished, 
the  glittering  pall  appearing  to  evaporate  under  the  bright  sun- 
shine as  spontaneously  as  a  fleecy  cloud  dissolves  in  the  blue  sum- 
mer sky.  Their  numbers  had  been  so  reduced  that  there  were  not 
men  enough  remaining  to  man  the  three  ships,  and  the  commander 
decided  to  abandon  the  "Petite  Hermine."  But  w'as  he  to  return 
with  no  spoils  or  evidence  of  success?  The  products  so  far  of  the 
costly  journey  were  geographical  information  and  very  problem- 
atical promises  of  prospective  gain  from  the  fur  trade.  The  palp- 
able results  had  been  money  spent,  tw^enty-five  men  dead  and  one 
vessel  abandoned.  As  a  cargo  he  brought  home  neither  gold  nor 
silver  nor  precious  stones.  So  he  determined  to  carry  with  him  the 
old  Chief  Donnacona,  who  could  speak  with  authority  of  the  fab- 
ulous resources  in  gold  and  rubies  of  the  Saguenay,  and  of  a  white 
race  which  inhabited  that  mysterious  country,  and  of  the  mon- 
strous beings  who  lived  without  food.  Donnacona  could  also  re- 
late what  he  had  himself  seen  of  the  still  more  marvelous  land  of 
Pecquemyans,  where  dwelt  a  one-legged  race.  Possibly  he  hoped 
to  compel  the  old  chief,  if  once  his  captive,  to  show  him  the  site 
of  the  Saguenay  treasures,  so  as  to  render  his  voyage  somewhat 
more  fruitful  than  it  had  so  far  been.  Be  the  motive  what 
it  may,  he  devised  a  scheme  to  entrap  the  chief  and  his  two 
former  captives.  The  people  of  Stadacona,  suspecting  treachery, 
had  ceased  to  visit  the  vessel.  On  the  other  hand,  Cartier's  appre- 
hensions had  been  excited  by  the  unusual  gathering  of  Indians 
at  Stadacona,  though  these,  probably,  were  only  parties  of  hunters 
returning  from  their  winter  chase.     His  fears  of  Donnacona  were 


38        QUKBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

fanned  by  the  insinuations  of  his  new  alUes,  the  inhabitants  of 
Scitadiu — doubtless  the  same  as  the  Satadiu  previously  mentioned 
as  the  nearest  village  to  Stadacona,  in  the  chain  of  the  unstockaded 
groups  of  lodges  which  lined  the  south  shore.  They,  in  return 
for  their  friendship,  were  allowed  to  dismantle  the  abandoned 
ship  for  the  sake  of  its  nails. 

In  furtherance  of  his  design  against  Donnecana,  he  opened 
negotiations  with  the  wily  Taignoagny,  through  his  body  servant, 
Charles  Guyot,  who  was  a  favorite  of  Donnecana's  and  had  been 
his  guest.  The  ostensible  subject  of  the  negotiations  was  the 
capture  and  disposal  of  an  obnoxious  rival,  a  chief  called  Agona. 
Cartier  assured  the  Stadaconians  that  his  intentions  were  to  carry 
to  France  no  adults,  but  only  youths,  who  would  be  instructed  in 
the  French  language.  Nevertheless,  he  expressed  himself  as 
willing  to  transport  their  enemy  to  an  island  off  Newfoundland, 
where  he  would  cease  troubling  them.  Their  apprehensions 
being  thus  allayed,  Donnecana  and  others  consented  to  at- 
tend the  ceremony  of  the  elevation  of  a  high  cross  on  the  3rd  of 
May,  the  Feast  of  the  Holy  Cross.  On  the  cross  was  inscribed, 
not  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  the  King  of  the  Jews,  but  "Franciscus  Rex 
Dei  Gratia  Francorum  Rex  Regnat." 

,  After  the  ceremony  the  -great  men  of  the  tribe  accepted  the 
invitation'to  a'feast,  during  which  Donnacona,  two  other  chiefs, 
and  Taignoagny  and  Domagaya.  were  seized.  Until  the  ships 
sailed  on  the  6th  of  May  the  unfortunate  captives,  closely  guarded, 
were  allowed  to  have  intercourse  with  their  people,  who  were  thus 
induced  to  supply  them  with  food  for  the  voyage.  In  return  Car- 
tier  distributed  to  their  wives  and  children  a  few  trifles ;  cheered 
them  by  the  promise  of  a  return  the  following  spring;  and  then, 
with  the  remnant  of  his  crew,  sailed  away.  Their  own  con- 
sciences may  have  been  easy.  They  were  certainly  thankful  to 
escape ;  but  they  left  heavy  hearts  and  streaming  eyes  on  the  banks 
of  the  St.  Lawrence,  and  in  the  minds  of  the  Indians  a  sense  of 
wTong  which  may  have  been  the  source  of  the  traditional  hatred 
of  the  Iroquois  against  the  French.  Cartier  but  followed  the  ex- 
ample of  Columbus  and  of  others  before  him,  as  his  example  has 
so  often  been  followed  since  by  travelers  and  explorers,  who  have 


cartier's  third  voyage  3CJ, 

not  realized  that,  beneath  the  red  or  black  skin,  may  beat  as  warm 
a  heart  as  ever  throbbed  in  the  white  man's  bosom,  and  that, 
despite  what  may  seem  impassiveness,  the  family  affections  of  the 
savages  are  their  strongest  emotions.  In  this  instance,  as 
often  since  on  this  continent,  we  have  the  pitiable  sight  of 
the  civilized  Christian  playing  the  part  of  the  savage — outwit- 
ting him  in  negotiation,  and  violating  his  rights  by  superior  force, 
while  raising  over  him  the  Cross  of  the  Prince  of  Peace,  and  pre- 
tending to  be  actuated  by  motives  of  the  purest  philanthropy  and 
religion. 

The  return  voyage  was  uneventful.  Cartier  sailed  to  the  south 
of  Newfoundland  by  the  channel  whose  existence  he  merely  sus- 
pected the  year  before,  and  cast  anchor  in  the  harbor  of  St.  Male 
on  the  1 6th  of  July. 

Cartier's  Third  Voyage. 

Cartier's  report  cannot  have  been  encouraging,  and  it  is 
not  surprising  that  the  Government  did  not  enable  him  to  ful- 
fill the  promise  given  to  the  bereaved  Indians  that  their  chiefs 
and  relations  would  be  restored  to  them  within  twelve  moons. 
That  he  himself  indulged  in  any  glowing  forecast  of  the 
regions  he  had  discovered  and  named  New  France  is  im- 
probable. He  was  honest  enough  to  tell  the  truth.  Had  he 
not  been,  the  truth  could  not  have  been  suppressed ;  for 
what  his  comrades  endured  must  have  been  told,  embellished  with 
exaggerated  details,  and  for  proof  of  their  story  they  had 
but  to  point  to  the  twenty -five  sorrowing  households  in  the 
little  Breton  town.  In  the  Introductory  Dedication  of  the  nar- 
rative of  the  second  voyage  to  Francis  I.,  the  motives  for  further 
exploration  were  set  forth.  Foremost  stands  the  duty  of  spread- 
ing the  True  Faith.  As  it  originated  in  the  East,  traveled  west- 
ward from  Asia  into  Europe  with  the  sun.  it  was,  he  said,  "the 
mission  of  the  True  Church  to  carry  it  still  further  westward  to 
those  far  western  wilds  so  as  to  embrace  in  her  fold  those  western 
heathen  to  the  confusion  of  the  wicked  Lutherans."  But  under- 
lying that  pious  motive  was  the  dread  of  Spain's  territorial  ex- 
pansion in  the  Western  Hemisphere  and  of  her  constant  commer- 


^O  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

cial  growth,  both  of  which  France  was  ripe  to  emulate.  Possibly 
this  potent  reason  would  have  added  sufficient  weight  to  induce 
Cartier's  royal  master  to  divert  some  funds  from  his  belligerent 
and  amorous  enterprises  towards  the  equipment  of  a  third  expedi- 
tion, had  not  the  clouds  of  war  begun  again  to  gather.  There  had 
been  a  long  peace  between  Francis  I.  and  his  implacable  enemy, 
Charles  V.  It  had  lasted  from  1529  to  1536,  as  the  result  of  the 
Treaty  of  Cambrai  negotiated  by  Louise  of  Savoy,  Francis'  moth- 
er, and  Margaret  of  Austria,  Charles  V's  aunt,  two  clever  women 
who  had  succeeded  when  professional  diplomats  had  failed.  But 
both  had  passed  away,  and  their  restraining  influence  over  the 
revengeful  passions  of  the  King  had  died  with  them.  And  to  the 
passion  of  revenge  that  of  jealousy  was  soon  added,  for  Charles' 
brilliant,  disinterested  and  successful  foray  against  the  pirates  of 
Algiers  in  1535  had  won  him  the  plaudits  and  the  thanks  of 
Christendom,  and  increased  his  influence  in  the  Mediterranean. 
These  feelings  had  operated  as  an  incentive  to  explora- 
tion when  Cartier  sailed  out  of  St.  Malo  in  1535,  but  ere  he  re- 
turned in  1536  Francis  I.  had  already  invaded  Italy,  and  Charles 
was  massing  his  troops  to  enter  Provence,  Had  Cartier  planted 
his  Cross  as  a  sign  of  French  sovereignty  on  a  gold  or  a  silver 
mine,  instead  of  a  snowdrift,  the  demands  of  war  might  have 
yielded  to  the  claims  of  commerce.  But  as  he  could  promise  only 
the  slight  and  uncertain  gains  of  a  trade  in  furs,  it  is  not  surpris- 
ing that  the  onerous  expenditure  and  the  all-absorbing  excitement 
of  a  foreign  war  obscured  the  importance  of  his  discovery, 
with  the  result  that  four  years  elapsed  before  he  again  sailed  forth 
on  his  third  voyage.  By  that  time  another  hollow  peace  had  been 
ratified  between  the  two  European  sovereigns,  with  all  the  usual 
nsincere  demonstrations  and  formalities  of  affection  and  good 
faith. 

Meanwhile  the  unfortunate  savages  had  been  exhibited  at 
Court ;  instructed  in  the  mysteries  of  the  Faith ;  baptized  in 
the  Cathedral  of  St.  Alalo  on  March  25.  1538;  and  had  sickened 
and  died.  Only  one — a  girl — survived  to  see  Cartier's  ships  set 
sail  in  1541  for  her  old  home.  Cartier's  previous  voyages  had 
proved,  if  not  the  full  agricultural  capabilities  of  the  valley  of  the 


CARTIER  S    THIRD    VOYAGE  .^l;! 

St.  Lawrence,  at  least  the  fertilit}-  of  the  land  and  the  adaptation 
of  the  climate  for  the  cultivation  of  certain  valuable  products. 
They  had  also  admitted  him  to  the  portal  of  a  vast  region,  which 
such  Indian  rumors  as  he  had  been  able  to  interpret  described  as 
abounding  in  mineral  wealth ;  and  this  was  the  prize  for  which 
alone  adventurers  were  willing  to  risk  a  fortune.  The  accounts 
of  the  third  expedition  are  fragmentar}.  In  the  French  archives 
there  are  certain  papers  appointing  Cartier  to  the  command  of  a 
fleet,  and  subsequently  appointing  RobervaJ  to  the  position  of 
Lieutenant-General  of  the  Army  in  Canada,  but  the  narrative  of 
Cartier's  voyage  and  that  of  Roberval  exist  only  as  a  translation 
by  Hakluyt,  and  both  narratives  are  incomplete. 

The  course  of  events  seems  to  have  been  as  follows :  On 
October  17th,  1540,  the  King  appoints  Jacques  Cartier  Captain 
General  and  Master  Pilot  over  a  fleet  to  carry  "  our  aforesaid  sub- 
jects, of  good  will  and  of  all  qualities,  arts  and  injdustries,  to 
penetrate  further  into  the  said  country,  to  converse  with  the  people 
thereof,  and  to  reside  with  them  if  needs  be."  The  commission 
is  given  to  Cartier  as  "  discoverer  of  the  great  country  of  the  lands 
of  Canada  and  Hochelaga,  occupying  a  corner  of  Asia  on  the  side 
of  the  West."  The  decree  endows  Cartier  with  all  the  preroga- 
tives and  privileges,  etc.,  of  the  position,  empowers  him  to  employ 
his  own  lieutenants  and  pilots,  gives  him  his  old  ship,  the 
"  Esmerillon,"  to  serve  as  store  ship  to  the  fleet,  orders  certain 
officials  to  transfer  from  the  gaol  fifty  prisoners  not  guilty  of 
lese-majestc  or  heresy  to  serve  as  members  of  the  crew.  From 
the  wording  of  the  despatch,  we  would  infer  that  the  expedition 
was  intended  to  be  primarily  for  the  purposes  of  exploration. 

On  the  29th  of  January,  1540  (which  was  by  our  reckoning 
January,  1541,  as  in  France  the  year  then  commenced  at  Easter), 
Cartier  appears  before  Monseigneur  I'Alloue  to  receive  the  King's 
instructions,  given  on  December  12th,  to  act  as  "  Captain  General 
and  Master  Pilot  of  all  the  ships  and  other  vessels  which  we  will 
send  to  the  land  of  Canada  and  Hochelaga  as  far  as  the  Saguenay, 
consisting  of  one  of  the  corners  of  Asia  on  the  side  of  the  North." 
China  in  the  previous  despatch  was  to  the  West  of  Hochelaga,  but 
is  here  to  the  North  of  Saguenay.     The  despatch  is  evidently 


42  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

instigated  by  opposition  to  the  expedition  in  the  seaports  in  the 
Duchy  of  Brittany,  for  the  King's  subjects  are  bidden  to  cease, 
through  perversity  or  mahce,  discouraging  sailors  from  taking 
service  under  Cartier.  Still  there  is  no  indication  of  its  being  a 
colonial  enterprise.  But  on  January  15th,  1541,  or  a  month  and 
three  days  after  the  last  commission  to  Cartier,  Francis  I  appointed 
Jean  Francois  de  la  Roque  Seigneur  de  Roberval,  a  Picardy  gen- 
tleman— who  may  have  earned  the  distinction  by  contributing 
money  for  the  expedition — Lieutenant-General,  Chief  Director 
and  Captai.n  of  the  expedition,  Roberval  is  also  permitted  to 
recruit  his  crews  and  colonists  from  the  gaols.  Evidently  in  the 
interval  the  scope  of  the  expedition  had  been  extended.  Roberval 
was  invested  with  the  most  ample  civil  and  military  powers  of  a 
viceroy.  Cartier  became  his  subordinate  and  the  King  revokes 
any  patents  or  powers  conferred  on  others  contrary  to  those  con- 
ferred on  Roberval,  "  excepting  so  far  and  so  long  as  our  said 
lieutenant  may  permit."  But  Roberval  must  have  confirmed 
Cartier's  appointment  as  Captain  General  and  Master  Pilot ;  and 
Cartier,  with  tlie  best  grace  he  could  muster,  accepted  Roberval 
instead  of  the  King  as  his  master. 

During  the  winter  five  ships  were  equipped,  provisioned  and 
manned  for  two  years,  but  Roberval  had  been  unable  to  collect  the 
artillery  and  ammunition,  without  which  he,  as  Lieutenant-Gen- 
eral, could  not  fittingly  assume  command  of  the  army.  And  there- 
fore, as  the  King  was  impatient,  Cartier  set  sail  with  the  five  ships 
from  St.  Malo  on  the  23rd  of  May,  1541,  and  Roberval  went  by 
land  to  Honfleur,  whence  he  expected  to  proceed  immediately  with 
one  or  two  ships  and  his  armament.  Stormy  weather  separated 
Cartier's  fleet,  and  a  month  was  spent  by  the  first  arrivals  waiting 
for  their  comrades  at  the  rendezvous  at  Carpont,  near  the  mouth 
of  the  Straits  of  Belle  Isle.  It  was  the  23rd  of  August  before 
they  cast  anchor  in  the  harbor  of  Stadacona. 

Agona  Donnacona's  old  rival,  and  after  the  capture  his  substi- 
tute, came  off  with  some  canoes  full  of  men,  women  and  children 
to  welcome  their  king  and  their  kinsfolk.  But  they  were  greeted 
with  the  news  that  Donnacona  was  dead,  and  that  the  other  nine 
stubbornlv  refused  to  return.     They  feigned  to  believe  the  tale 


CARTIER  S    THIRD    VOYAGE.  43 

that  the  other  nine  (eight  of  whom  were  really  dead,  and  the 
ninth  prudently  detained  at  St.  Male)  had  refused  to  leave  the  pal- 
aces of  France  for  their  native  lodges.  Chief  Agounna  displayed 
satisfaction, so  Cartier  surmised ,  at  the  death  of  his  rival  an(,l  crowned 
the  French  commander  with  a  chaplet  of  wampum.  The  latter 
nevertheless  judged  it  wise  to  give  his  doubtful  friends  a  wider 
berth  than  on  his  previous  voyage;  so,  instead  of  again  laying  up 
his  ships  for  winter  in  the  St.  Charles,  he  selected  a  harbor  some 
nine  miles  above  Quebec,  where  a  stream  cuts  through  the  cliff 
which  extends  as  an  unbroken  wall  from  the  Stadacona  promon- 
tory to  that  point.  The  spot  was  prol^ably  already  known  to  Car- 
tier,  and  it  was  well  chosen,  as  on  ])oth  sides  the  stream  there 
was  a  considerable  acreage  of  cultivable  land,  the  first  suitable 
for  a  settlement  on  the  north  shore  above  Stadacona.  Beyond  the 
meadow,  then  thickly  covered  with  hardwood  forest,  the  steep 
banks  again  confined  the  St.  Lawrence,  but  the  Cap  Rouge  stream 
which  flows  Avith  so  gentle  a  fall  over  the  low  divide,  separating 
the  Valley  of  the  St.  Lawrence  from  that  of  the  St.  Charles,  leads 
to  the  belief  that  the  depression  was  once  a  watery  channel,  and 
the  ridge  between  Cap  Rouge  and  Quebec  an  island.  At  the 
mouth  of  the  stream  Cartier  safely  moored  three  of  his  ships ^ 
leaving  in  the  river  the  two  which  he  proposed  sending  back  to 
France.  The  site  was  one  of  the  best  he  could  have  selected, 
for  fertile  land,  fit  for  cultivation  by  his  future  colonists,  ex- 
tended along  the  river  bank  over  the  low  divide  into  the  beau- 
tiful carse  of  the  St.  Charles.  He  had  probably  discovered 
on  his  previous  voyage  that  intimate  intercourse  between  the 
Indians  and  his  former  well  disciplined  crews  was  not  conducive 
to  either  good  morals  or  good  health;  and  as  the  men  he  now 
commanded  consisted  of  far  inferior  material,  and  as,  more- 
over, he  had  every  reason  to  expect  that  his  treachery  would 
provoke  reprisals,  there  were  strong  prudential  reasons  for  es- 
tablishing himself  at  a  safe  distance  from  the  families  of  Donna- 
cona  and  the  other  captives.  As  an  additional  inducement 
to  select  this  side.  Cap  Rouge  was  nearer  the  Bourgade  of 
Hochalai,  whose  chief  had  on  the  previous  voyage  shown  him- 
self not  only  friendly  to  Cartier,  but  hostile  to  Donnacona, 
and      would      therefore     probably    barter     food     for     trinkets 


44  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTUR\ 

during  the  coming  winter.  Having  landed  his  artillery,  he 
built  a  rude  fort,  and  unloaded  the  ships  which  were  to  return 
to  France.  No  time  was  wasted,  and  on  the  2nd  of  September 
the  two  ships,  under  command  of  ^lace  Jalobert,  his  brother-in- 
law,  and  Etienne  Noel,  his  nephew,  set  sail  for  France  with  news 
of  what  had  been  done,  and  of  the  non-arrival  of  the  Viceroy. 
Cartier  then  set  twenty  men  to  work  clearing  an  acre  and  a  half 
of  ground,  and  sowing  it  with  turnips,  while  others  cleared  paths 
up  the  overhanging  cliffs  to  the  east,  and  built  a  fort  on  its  summit 
to  protect  the  colonists  from  attack  by  the  Stadacona  Indians, 
While  cutting  through  the  slates  they  found  there  the  very 
regular  and  pure  quartz  crystals  which  still  go  by  the  name  of 
"Cape  Diamonds,"  but  which  they  imagined  to  be  the  real  gem, 
also  some  iron  pyrites,  or,  more  probably,  scales  of  mica,  which 
they  mistook  for  gold.  But  Cartier  had  more  important  work  to 
do  than  even  gathering  gold,  alluring  as  that  pursuit  was.  Before 
the  winter  set  in  he  wished  to  make  a  preliminary  exploration  of 
the  country  above  Hochelaga  in  order  to  see  for  himself  the  char- 
acter of  the  rapids  which  had  to  be  passed  in  reaching  what  he 
supposed  would  be  the  headwaters  of  the  Saguenay.  Thus  equip- 
ped with  information  he  could,  during  the  approaching  winter, 
prepare  for  a  summer  exploration  of  the  western  country.  So  he 
started  with  two  boats,  leaving  the  fort  under  the  command  of  the 
Mscount  de  Beaupre.*  Both  boats  ascended  to  the  foot  of  the 
first  rapids,  where  one  boat  was  left,  but  the  current  was  so  swift 
that  they  were  unable  to  propel  the  single  boat  with  which  Cartier 
tried  to  proceed.  He  tlierefore  landed  and  started  to  ascend  the 
banks  of  the  river,  but  soon  desisted.  As  no  mention  is  made  of 
Hochelaga,  in  which  he  took  so  intense  an  interest  on  the  previous 
journey,  it  is  questionable  whether  the  rapids  he  was  attempting 
to  scale  were  really  those  at  Lachine,  or  whether  he  was  ascending 
the  Ottawa,  or  possibly  even  the  St.  ATaurice.  On  his  way  up  the 
river  his  former  friend,  the  Lord  of  Hochalai,  received  him  cordi- 
ally, and  the  Indians  where  he  made  his  last  halt  gave  him  both 

*  The  account  of  this  boat  journey  is  so  much  less  precise  than  that  given 
during  the  second  voyage  of  the  expedition  over  the  same  ground  that  it  seems  im- 
probable that  the  same  hand  wrote  the  two  narratives. 


ROBERVAL  S  FAILURE.  45 

provisions  and  information.  But  on  his  return  he  found  the  Chief 
of  Hochalai  absent.  He  learned  afterwards  that  he  had  descended 
to  Stadacona  to  concert  measures  with  Agounna  against  the 
strangers.  His  original  uneasiness  was  converted  into  apprehen- 
sion on  reaching  Cap  Rouge  by  the  sullen  behavior  of  the  Indians, 
who  ceased  to  bring  provisions  to  the  fort,  and  by  the  accounts 
given  by  some  of  the  company  who  had  gone  to  Stadacona  of  the 
gathering  of  the  savages  there,  evidently  with  hostile  intention. 
Here  the  narrative  suddenly  closes,  and  the  next  glimpse  we  get 
of  Cartier  is  in  the  account  of  Roberval's  outward  voyage  in  the 
spring  of  1542. 

On  the  2d  of  June,  1542,  Roberval's  fleet  of  three  ships,  carry- 
ing as  colonists  two  hundred  men,  women  and  children,  entered 
the  port  of  St.  Johns,  Newfoundland,  where  he  found  seventeen 
fishing  vessels.  The  writer  of  the  fragment  dealing  with  Rober- 
val's attempt  to  colonize  Canada  thus  tells  of  the  meeting  of  the 
Viceroy  with  his  Pilot-General :  "During  our  long  detention  in 
the  Port  of  St.  Johns,  Jacques  Cartier  and  his  company  entered 
the  harbor  on  his  return  from  Canada,  whither  he  had  been  sent 
as  the  pioneer,  with  a  fleet  of  five  ships.  When  reporting  to  the 
General  he  told  him  that  he  v/as  carrying  back  with  him  some 
diamonds  and  a  quantity  of  gold  ore  which  he  had  found  in  Can- 
ada. On  the  following  Sunday  we  tested  some  of  the  ore  and 
found  it  good.*  He  reported  to  our  General  that  the  scanty  force 
he  had  could  not  successfully  oppose  the  Indians,  who  prowled 
about  their  encampment  and  harassed  them  without  cessation. 
On  that  account  he  was  returning  to  France.  Nevertheless  he  and 
all  his  company  had  only  praise  to  bestow  on  the  country  they  had 
abandoned,  by  reason  of  its  fertility.  But  when  our  General, 
whose  forces  were  ample,  ordered  him  to  return  with  him,  Cartier 
and  his  comrades,  inflated  with  pride,  and  anxious  to  reap  the 
glory  of  their  discoveries,  escaped  secretly  the  following  night, 
sailing  away  to  Brittany  unceremoniously,  and  without  leave- 
taking."  It  would  be  an  ignominious  ending  of  a  brilliant  naval 
career  if  the  incident  was  accurately  recorded.     This  reference, 

*  If  mica,  it  would  have  passed  unaltered  through  such  heat  as  they  could 
apply. 


^0  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

however,  tells  the  tale  of  the  winter's  experience  at  Cap  Rouge. 
The  colonists  probably  did  not  suffer  from  the  scurvy.  Late  as 
it  was  when  the  turnips  were  planted,  the  acre  and  a  half  must 
have  yielded  some  crop.  Aloreover,  Cartier  had  learned  the 
efficacy  of  balsam  leaves,  and  if  lie  came  to  the  determination 
early  in  the  winter  to  abandon  the  attempted  colonization,  he 
doubtless  converted  the  stock  of  farm  cattle  into  food.  Mean- 
while, instead  of  disease,  he  had  to  combat  the  ceaseless  activity 
of  the  Indians,  who,  as  was  their  wont,  would  pick  off  wanderers 
from  the  camp,  and  by  their  numbers  must  have  made  the  com- 
mander anxious  even  as  to  the  safety  of  his  fort  and  of  his  ships ; 
for  the  Indians  of  the  Upper  St.  Lawrence  had  united  with 
those  of  Stadacona  in  harassing  the  settlers,  as  we  infer  from 
the  warning  given  by  the  historian  of  Cartier's  third  voyage. 
After  describing  the  cries  and  expressions  of  joy  to  which  the 
Indians  who  had  gathered  at  the  foot  of  the  rapids  gave  utterance 
on  perceiving  Cartier's  presence,  he  adds:  "None  the  less,  one 
must  beware  of  all  their  charming  demonstrations  of  pleasure, 
for  they  would  fain  have  killed  us,  as  we  learned  subsequently." 
It  is  no  wonder,  therefore,  if,  discouraged  by  Roberval's  absence, 
alarmed  by  the  gathering  numbers  and  the  open  hostility  of  the 
natives,  depressed  by  the  gloom  of  the  long  winter,  and  anxious 
to  reap  as  speedily  as  possible  the  glory  and  profits  of  his  min- 
eral discoveries,  he  remanned  his  ships  on  the  opening  of  naviga- 
tion and  started  for  France ;  and  as  little  wonder  that,  once  under 
way,  with  the  vision  of  their  happy  St.  Malo  families  and  homes 
before  them,  and  the  Indian  war  whoops  still  ringing  in  their  ears, 
Cartier's  crew,  if  not  Cartier  himself,  refused  to  return  under  a 
commander  who,  by  his  previous  hesitation,  inactivity  and  im- 
providence, made  failure  under  his  leadership  a  foregone  con- 
clusion. 

While  Cartier's  five  ships  were  thus  on  their  way  to  France, 
Roberval  and  his  two  hundred  colonists  in  their  three  ships  were 
ascending  the  St.  Lawrence  under  the  pilotage  of  Jean  Alphonse 
Saintonge.  Toward  the  end  of  July  the  Governor-General  landed 
his  motley  crew  and  their  scanty  stock  of  provisions  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Cap   Rouge  rivulet,  at  the  spot  previously  occupied  by 


ROBERVAL  S     FAILURE, 


47 


Cartier.  His  preparations  were  commenced  on  a  much  more  sub- 
stantial scale  than  those  of  the  cautious  sea  captain.  On  the  site  of 
Cartier's  fort,  on  the  heights  overlooking  the  valley  of  Cap  Rouge 
and  the  St.  Lawrence,  he  built  a  fortification,  which  his  enthusias- 
tic chronicler  says  "was  beautiful  to  look  upon,  and  of  surprising 
strength,  within  which  were  two  corps  de  logis  dwelling  rooms 
and  an  annex  of  forty-five  by  fifty  feet  in  length,  which  contained 
divers  chambers,  a  dining-room,  a  kitchen,  offices,  and  two  tiers 
of  cellars.  Near  them  he  built  a  bakery  and  a  mill,  and  dug  a 
well." 

In  the  valley  below  he  erected  a  two-story  house  in  which  to 
store  the  provisions  he  imprudently  had  not  brought.  And,  having 
done  all  this,  he  renamed  the  country  "France  Prime,"  not  being 
satisfied  with  the  more  euphonious  name  "I.a  Nouvelle  France," 
which  Cartier  had  already  given.  On  the  14th  of  September,  find- 
ing probably  that  his  provisions  were  already  running  short,  he 
sent  back  to  France  two  of  the  three  ships,  under  command  of 
Monsieur  Sainterre  and  Mous.  Guinecourt,  with  instructions  to 
return  laden  with  provisions  the  following  spring,  and  to  learn 
the  value  of  certain  mineral  specimens,  either  sent  in  their  care  or 
previously  carried  to  France  by  Cartier.  Evidently  Roberval's 
faith  had  become  shaken,  after  further  exploration,  in  the  genuine- 
ness of  Cartier's  diamonds  and  gold  found  in  the  red  shales  of 
Cap  Rouge.  How  many  men  were  detailed  for  the  two  ships  is 
not  told,  nor  whether  they  were  drafted  from  the  better  class  of 
his  company  or  from  the  criminal  element.  If,  as  was  probable, 
they  were  drawn  from  the  former,  those  who  remained  must  have 
been  as  hopeless  a  lot  of  colonists  as  ever  landed  in  Botany  Bay. 
The  ships  had  hardly  left  before  the  colony  was  put  on  short 
rations.  For  a  time  the  Indians  exchanged  fish  for  trinkets,  but 
when  the  winter  set  in  fresh  meats  and  vegetables  failed,  scurvy 
again  attacked  and  carried  off  fifty  of  the  miserable,  half-starved 
crew,  who  must  have  thought  with  regret  of  even  the  prison  fare 
of  France.  For  they  were  not  men  of  the  same  stamp  as  Cartier's 
crew  on  his  second  voyage,  nor  did  they  bear  their  sufferings  as 
heroically.  Crime  and  punishment  varied  the  monotony  of  their 
winter's  experience.     One  man,  Michel  Gaillon,  was  hanged  for 


^g  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

theft,  he  having  the  ignoble  notoriety  of  being  the  first  criminal 
executed  in  New  France.  Several  were  chained  and  imprisoned ; 
others,  females  as  well  as  males,  were  whipped ;  and  "by  these 
means,"  the  chronicler  quaintly  tells  us,  "they  were  enabled  to  live 
in  peace  and  quietness." 

The  ice  began  to  melt  in  April,  but  when  spring  re- 
turned, the  General  could  muster  only  one  hundred  men, 
seventy  of  whom  he  took  with  him  in  eight  boats  to  explore  the 
province  of  Sagueuay,  I'^aving  tliiily  to  protect  the  fort  and  the 
ships  under  the  command  of  the  Seigneur  de  Royeze.  These  thirty 
were  to  remain  at  their  post  until  the  first  of  July,  when,  if  the 
expedition  did  not  return,  they  were  to  be  at  liberty  to  sail  to 
France  in  the  two  ships,  or  more  probably  one  of  the  two,  which  he 
left  them.  As  he  was  said  to  have  arrived  with  three  ships,  and 
as  he  dispatched  two  to  France  on  the  September  previous,  and  left 
two  at  Cap  Rouge,  he  must  have  built  one  vessel  at  least  during 
his  nine  months'  residence  at  Cap  Rouge,  and  thus  inaugurated  an 
industry  wdiich  was  in  after  days  to  become  the  principal  support 
of  Quebec  during  the  winter  months.  Whither  Roberval  went  is 
very  doubtful.  He  makes  no  mention  of  Hochelaga,  and  therefore 
he  probably  did  not  ascend  the  St.  Lawrence  to  the  Ottawa.  He 
probably  attempted  to  explore  the  St.  Maurice  and  thus  reach  the 
country  of  the  Saguenay,  which  seems  to  have  had  such  a  fascina- 
tion for  these  early  explorers,  and  the  position  of  which  was  so 
little  understood.  Wherever  he  may  have  gone,  this  ex- 
ploratory expedition  was  evidently  disastrous.  It  contained  too 
many  gentlemen  to  permit  good  discipline,  for  we  are  told  that  on 
the  14th  of  June  four  of  these  worthies  returned,  with  others  of 
less  note,  and  brought  the  sad  news  of  the  loss  of  a  boat  and  eight 
of  the  crew.  And  they  were  followed  on  June  19th  by  five  others, 
who  were  the  bearers  this  time  of  six  score  pounds  of  corn 
and  instructions  from  the  General  to  wait  his  return  until  the  22nd 
of  July  before  sailing.  And  here  the  narrative,  evidently  written 
by  one  of  the  thirty  left  at  the  fort,  and  translated  by  Hakluyt,  sud- 
denly breaks  off,  and  the  curtain  falls  on  the  first  act  of  the  roman- 
tic drama  of  French  colonization  in  the  New  World. 

The  interval  proved  to  be  long  ere  it  again  rose  on  the  same 


ROBERVAL  S   FAILURE.  49 

scenery,  but  on  new  actors.  What  befell  Roberval's  colony,  the 
Viceroy  himself,  and  his  Pilot-General,  cannot  with  certainty  be 
determined.  Lescarbot  and  the  historians  of  the  following  cen- 
tury narrate  so  many  incidents  which  we  now  know  to  be  fiction 
that  little  credence  can  be  given  to  their  statements.  Champlain 
tells  us  that  Roberval  compelled  Cartier  to  return  to  the  Island  of 
Orleans,  where  they  built  a  house  and  resided,  until,  his  Majesty 
removing  him  far  important  service,  this  enterprise,  deprived  of 
its  vigilant  superior,  gradually  came  to  naught.  Lescarbot  seems 
to  quote  Cartier  when  he  asserts  that  Cartier  was  sent  to  assist 
Roberval  in  withdrawing  what  remained  of  his  colony,  a  service 
which  occupied  eight  months.  Cartier  had  previously  resided,  he 
says,  seventeen  months  in  Canada,  which  is  the  sum  of  Cartier's 
two  winter  campaigns  in  the  country.  If  Cartier  was  really  sent 
to  rescue  Roberval,  the  voyage  must  have  occurred  in  the  summer 
of  1543,  for,  by  letters  patent  on  April  3rd,  1544,  Cartier  and 
Roberval  were  summoned  to  appear  before  Robert  Le  Goupil  as 
Judge  to  settle  a  pecuniar}'  claim  made  by  Cartier  for  expenditure 
over  receipts.  But  Harrisse  has  proved  from  documentary  evi- 
dence that  Sainteterre,  who  had  returned  to  France  immediately 
on  Roberval's  first  landing  at  Cap  Rouge,  warned  by  Cartier's  ill- 
success  of  the  probable  fate  of  his  commander,  obtained  from  the 
King  on  January  26th  an  order  to  take  two  ships  to  his  release. 
That  the  order  is  accompanied  by  the  statement  that  he  could  do 
this  as  well  or  better  than  any  other  person  does  not  reflect  on 
Cartier's  professional  ability  to  execute  such  a  commission,  but  on 
the  possible  unwillingness  of  Roberval  to  be  rescued  by  his  former 
Captain  General  and  Master  Pilot.  It  is  strange  that  so  mem- 
orable an  event  as  the  first  attempt  at  colonization  by  France 
should  have  been  recorded  in  so  incomplete  a  manner,  and 
that  the  records  themselves  should  have  been  first  pre- 
served in  a  fragmentary  condition  only,  in  a  translation  in 
Hakhiyt's  collection  of  voyages.  Further  research  in  the 
French  archives  may  unearth  the  complete  narrative,  but  nothing 
can  alter  the  conclusion  that  the  plans  were  ill-laid,  the  ma- 
terial enlisted  dll-suUed.  the  enterprise  ill-conducted,  and  the 
result    an    utter    failure.      Robersal    and    his    aristocratic    com- 


50  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

panions  evidently  aspired  to  rival  their  Spanish  cousins,  but  they 
lacked  both  their  opportunity  and  their  indomitable  vigor  and 
energy.  Cartier  alone  stands  forth,  eminent  in  seamanship,  dis- 
cretion and  power  of  organization.  Though  Lescarbot,  writing 
eighty  years  after  Cartier,  and  with  a  strong  prejudice  against  the 
St.  Malo  Captain,  charges  him  with  faint-heartedness  for  failure 
in  his  colonial  schemes,  for  which  he  asserts  he  was  fully  provided 
and  equipped  on  his  second  expedition,  there  is  no  evidence,  either 
in  Cartier's  own  narrative  or  other  contemporaneous  documents, 
that  he  was  entrusted  with  civil  authority  as  Governor  of  a  colony, 
or  that  on  him  or  his  colonists  were  conferred  any  trading  privil- 
eges, or  that  the  expedition  was  other  than  an  exploration  under- 
taken at  the  expense  of  the  State. 


CHAPTER   III. 

What   Happened   on  the   St.  Lawrence  Between  1544 

and  1608. 

The  sixty-five  years  whicli  intervened  between  Cartier's  and 
Roberval's  futile  attempts  to  colonize  the  valley  of  the  St.  Law- 
rence, and  the  actual  foundation  of  Quebec  by  Chaniplain,  con- 
stitute the  dark  age  of  Canadian  history.  The  French  govern- 
ment was  during  this  period  haunted  by  a  desire  to  reoccupy  the 
abandoned  territory,  but  did  nothing.  Not  so,  however,  French 
sailors.  They  carried  on  a  desultory  trade  with  the  Indians,  as 
we  learn  from  a  letter  written  l^y  Jacques  Noel,  Cartier's  nephew, 
in  1587  to  John  Growte,  correcting  some  inaccuracies  on  a  cer- 
tain map  of  North  America,  by  reference  to  his  own  observations 
and  to  a  map  of  his  uncle's,  which  he  says  has  been  lent  to  his  two 
sons,  Michael  and  John,  then  in  Canada.  The  writer  promises 
that  if,  on  their  return,  he  learned  from  them  anything  new  worth 
recording,  he  would  comnnmicate  it.  There  is  no  reason  to  sup- 
pose that  any  of  these  traders  extended  their  operations  beyond 
Hochelaga,  the  limit  of  Cartier's  explorations.  They  more  prob- 
ably confined  them  to  the  mouth  of  the  Saguenay,  for  Tadousac 
was  a  great  center  of  Indian  barter  when  Champlain  founded  his 
colony  in  i6o8.  It  was  then,  no  doubt,  as  Lake  St.  John  now  is, 
a  rendezvous  of  the  Algonquin  tribes,  who  hunted  for  skins  over 
the  Labrador  promontory  and  wandered  northwesterly  to  the  land 
of  their  distant  kinsfollc  the  Crees. 

But  during  this  blank  in  the  annals  of  the  St.  Lawrence  a  revo- 
lution was  being  enacted  there,  which  these  transitory  visitors 
from  Europe  did  not  deem  worthy  of  recording,  but  which  was 
to  have  momentous  efifects  upon  the  fate  of  both  the  white  and 
the  red  men  east  of  the  Mississippi  for  nearly  two  centuries. 
From  the  facts  bearing  on  the  Indian  inhabitants  of  the  St.  Law- 
rence valley,  scattered  through  the  narrative  of  Cartier's  voyages, 


^2  QUEBEC    IX    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURV. 

we  mav  deduce  the  following  conclusions :  That  there  were 
either  sedentary  or  wandering  branches  of  the  Stadacona  Indians 
on  the  south  shore  of  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence,  and  that  they 
differed  in  language  and  habits  from  those  of  the  north  shore 
of  the  Gulf: — that  the  Stadacona  Indians  were  sedentary  and 
cultivated  land : — that,  as  Cartier  thought  it  necessary  to  specify 
that  certain  of  the  surrounding  villages  were  unenclosed,  we  may 
infer  that  Stadacona  was  stockaded : — that  there  was  jealousy  be- 
tween the  Stadacona  Indians  and  their  near  neighbors,  though 
from  their  common  practice  of  living  in  villages,  there  is  reason  to 
suppose  that  they  were  racially  allied  and  differed  from  the  wan- 
dering tribes  of  the  Algonquin  stock  : — that  there  was  a  chain  of 
villages  between  Stadacona  and  Hochelaga  inhabited  by  Indians 
of  similar  habits  and  customs,  and,  therefore,  of  like  lineage : — 
that  towards  the  close  of  this  first  attempt  of  colonization  by 
France  one,  at  least,  of  these  communities  allied  itself  with  Stada- 
cona to  oppose  the  French  intruders: — that  at  the  junction  of  the 
St.  Lawrence  and  Ottawa  was  the  largest  and  most  powerful  of 
these  families  or  tribes,  living  in  a  stockaded  village  and  exercis- 
ing a  certain  control,  if  not  coercion,  over  the  Indians  of  the  lower 
St.  Lawrence : — that,  if  there  was  not  hostility,  there  was  at  least 
acute  distrust  of  each  other  by  the  Indians  of  Stadacona  and 
Hochelaga.  The  inference  is  that  all  these  Indians  were  of  one 
race  but  of  different  tribes,  and  that  there  were  operating  causes 
of  disunion  under  which  they  were  segregating  themselves  into 
hostile  groups. 

That  they  were  all  of  the  same  race  Cartier  himself  believed, 
for  to  the  narrative  of  his  first  voyage  he,  or  his  historiographer, 
appends  a  list  of  words  which  he  calls  "Le  Langage  de  la  terre 
nouvellement  descouverte,  appellee  Nouvelle  France,"  and  he 
closes  his  second  with  another  list  of  words  and  phrases  from 
"Le  Langage  des  pays  et  royaume  de  Hochelaga  et  Canada, 
autrement  appellee  par  nous  la  Nouvelle  France."  The  majority 
of  the  words  for  the  same  object  in  the  two  lists  closely  agree.  As 
he  met  on  his  first  voyage  only  some  travelling  bands  of  the 
Indian  tribe  of  Stadacona,  and  as  the  second  list  of  words  is 
stated  to  be  from  llie  language  of  Hochelaga  as  well  as  of  Canada, 


LANGUAGE  AND   RACE. 


53 


we  have  thus  corroborative  evidence  that  the  language  of  both 
bourgades  was  substantially  tiie  same. 

That  the  Indians  of  tlochelaga  belonged  to  the  great  Iroquois 
family,  the  minute  description  of  the  stockaded  village  and  of  its 
internal  organization  leaves  no  room  for  doubt ;  and  if  all  the 
Indians  of  both  Hochelaga  and  Canada,  that  is,  of  the  whole 
valley  west  of  Isle  Awx  Coudres,  spoke  the  same  language,  then 
the  whole  of  the  St.  Lawrence  between  the  Gulf  and  Ottawa 
was  occupied  by  one  or  more  tribes  of  this  powerful  race.  Mr. 
J.  C.  Fillings  in  the  preface  to  his  bibliography  of  the  Iroquoian 
Languages  (Bulletin  of  the  Smithsonian  Institute,  1880)  referring 
to  the  Cartier  vocabularies,  says :  "To  the  Iroquoian  perhaps 
belongs  the  honor  of  being  the  first  of  any  American  family  of 
languages  to  be  placed  on  record."  Sir  Daniel  Wilson,  in  the  pro- 
ceedings and  transactions  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Canada,  com- 
pares Cartier's  words  for  the  numerals  with  corresponding  words 
in  the  dialect  of  the  Huron  Indians  of  Lorette,  near  Quebec. 
The  resemblance  is  occasionally  so  close  as  to  support  a  presump- 
tion of  Indian  linguistic  affinity  despite  the  dissimilarity  between 
some  of  Cartier's  words  and  their  representatives  in  the  modern 
dialect ;  a  dissimilarity  so  wide  that  the  imagination  of  the  most 
ingenious  philological  casuist  would  find  it  difficult  to  bridge  it. 
Among  the  numerals  are  the  following: 

Hochelaga  and  Canada.  Lorette,  IModern  Huron. 

I. — Secata Skat. 

3. — Asche Achin. 

5. — Ouiscon Wisch. 

10. — Assem Asen. 

In  another  table  Sir  Daniel  Wilson  gives,  on  the  authority  of 
Mr.  Horatio  Hale,  the  corresponding  words  from  Cartier  and 
the  language  of  the  Wyandots,  a  branch  of  the  Hurons,  now 
living  in  Anderdon  township,  Ontario.  Here  again  we  find  close 
resemblance,  and,  as  might  be  anticipated,  wide  divergence ;  for 
apart  from  the  change  which  would  inevitably  take  place  in  un- 
written speech  in  the  three  intervening  centuries,  Cartier's  philol- 
ogists cannot  have  followed  very  definite  rules  in  expressing  the 
sounds  of  the  Indian  language  by  the  European  alphabet,  nor 


^4  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

could  he  have  had  much  opportunity  of  correcting  the  idiosyn- 
crasies  of  individual  pronunciation  or  the  pecuHarities  of  dialect 
of  his  few  guides,  by  any  widely  extended  comparison. 
Charlevoix's  evidence,  though  given  in  1744.  is  not  of  much 
value.  He  says  the  inhabitants  of  Hochelaga  spoke  the  Huron 
language.  Cartier's  evidence  is  of  more  value  when  he  states 
specifically  that  the  vocabulary  he  gives  is  that  of  words  and 
sentences  spoken  by  the  inhabitants  of  the  two  villages  and  tribes 
of  Stadacona  and  Hochelaga.  The  incidental  references  to  cor- 
respondence in  manners  and  organization  confirm  the  linguistic 
evidence  of  the  racial  unity  of  the  two  communities,  and  of  their 
essential  differences  from  the  Indians  of  the  Algonquin  stock 
which  then  inhabited  the  north  shore  of  the  Gulf  and  of  the  lower 
St.  Lawrence. 

Lescarbot,  after  describing  Champlain's  trip  to  the  Huron 
countrs'  and  its  stockaded  towns,  of  which  he  had  heard  from 
the  lips  of  Champlain  himself,  said :  "I  am  confirmed  in  the 
opinion  that  Jacques  Cartier  correctly  described  the  stockaded 
bourgade  of  Hochelaga,  notwithstanding  the  denial  of  Champlain 
and  others  that  any  such  town  ever  existed,  simply  because  they 
found  no  remains  of  it,  and  no  tradition  of  its  existence."  Les- 
carbot rightly  attributed  Champlain's  not  being  able  to  find  at 
Quebec  the  famous  antidote  for  scurvy,  known  to  Jacques  Car- 
tier  as  "muicdda,"  to  the  fact  that  the  Indians  who  knew  of  it 
by  that  name  had  been  exterminated,  or  at  any  rate  had  dis- 
appeared. The  disappearance  of  Hochelaga  can  be  interpreted 
only  on  the  supposition  that  its  inhabitants  were  driven  away  by 
hostile  tribes,  and  all  vestige  of  the  bourgade  destroyed  by  the 
vindictive  conquerors,  in  accordance  with  the  general  habit  of  con- 
quering Indians  throughout  the  North  American  continent. 

Nicholas  Perrot,  an  Indian  trapper  and  interpreter,  who  wrote 
towards  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  says :  "The  coun- 
try of  the  Iroquois  was  originally  Montreal,  and  Three  Rivers ;" 
and  he  then  proceeds  to  explain  their  migration  by  a  tradition 
that  the  neighboring  Algonquins,  being  hunters  and  more  manly 
than  their  agricultural  neighbors,  asked  a  party  of  Iroquois  to 
accompany  them  on  a  hunting  expedition,  when  out  of  jealousy 


THE    VANISHING    OF    HOCHET.AGA.  55 

caused  by  the  better  luck  of  the  Iroquois,  the  Algonquins 
killed  some  of  their  Iroquois  companions.  A  bitter  feud  arose, 
which  led  to  the  driving  of  the  less  warlike  Iroquois,  first  to  the 
north  shore  of  Lake  Erie,  then  to  the  south  shore  of  Lake  On- 
tario. In  their  various  migrations  and  wars  the  Iroquois  acquired 
the  valor  and  skill  which  subsequently  made  them  the  dominant 
power.  When  Champlain  visited  Stadacona  and  Hochelaga  in 
1608,  only  65  years  after  Roberval  withdrew  his  company  of 
unsuccessful  colonists,  the  Iroquois  name  of  Stadacona  had  given 
place  to  the  Algonquin  name  of  Quebec  (see  note).  There  were 
then  on  the  St.  Lawrence  no  populous  stockaded  villages  occupied 
by  a  sedentary  population  possessing  the  social  and  political  organ- 
ization, crude  yet  distinct,  of  the  departed  race.  He  found  only 
scattered  bands  of  nomadic  x-Mgonquins. 

The  Huron  inhabitants  of  the  hourgade  of  Hochelaga  (if  we 
assume  they  were  Hurons),  had  migrated  to  the  shores  of  the 
Georgian  Bay  on  Lake  Huron;  but  the  descendants  of  Donna- 
cona — where  were  they?  Were  they  with  their  kindred  on  Lake 
Huron,  or  had  they  been  driven  from  their  picturesque  fastness 
or  voluntarily  abandoned  it  in  favor  of  the  more  temperate  valley 
of  the  Mohawk? 

Indian  tradition  assigns  as  the  cradle  of  the  Huron-Iroquois 
race    the    land    south    of    the    St.    Lawrence    and    between    it 


Note. — We  assume  that  Champlain  means,  when  he  says  it  was  so  called  by 
by  the  Indians,  that  Quebec  was  its  Indian  name,  as  Kebe-Kebec  is  the  Micmac 
word  for  a  contracted  water-way.  We  may  accept  that  as  the  origin  of  the 
name  in  preference  to  the  fanciful  myth  that  Champlain  or  one  of  his  comrades, 
on  first  seeing  the  magnificent  promontory  jutting  out  between  the  St.  Lawrence 
and  the  St.  Charles,  exclaimed  "Que  Bee  1" 

Hawkins,  in  his  "  Picture  of  Quebec,"  reproduces  from  Edmonstone's 
•'  Heraldry,"  the  mutilated  seal  of  William  de  la  Pole,  Earl  of  Suffolk — who  lived 
in  the  reigns  of  Henry  V.  and  VI.  The  word  Quebec  occurs  in  the  inscription  on 
the  seal.  According  to  Ferland  and  Faillon,  one  of  de  la  Pole's  titles  was  "Count 
of  Bri-Quebec" — a  name  probably  therefore  contracted  into  Quebec.  The  two 
syllables  which  compose  the  word  Quebec  occur  frequently  in  Norman  and 
Breton  names,  Caudebec — Briquebose — Briqueville — as  well  as  Briquebec — or  as 
it  is  sometimes  spelled,  Bricqiiebec,  near  Cherbourg.  The  Algonquin  name  Kebec 
must  therefore  have  sounded  so  familiar  to  the  Champlain  crews,  or  to  Breton  or 
Norman  traders  or  fishermen  who  preceded  him,  that  they  adopted  it  as  transfer- 
ring an  old  name  to  their  new  home.  They  may  not  have  called  it  Quebec  in 
memory  of  Briquebec,  but  may  merely  have  adopted  the  native  name  because  it  re- 
minded them  of  a  familiar  spot  beyond  the  seas,  and  was  suitable  to  the  locality. 


^6  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY, 

and  the  sea.  Another  tradition  places  the  cradle  of  the  race  on 
the  Lakes,  and  makes  the  tribe  migrate  first  towards  the  sunrise 
as  far  as  the  sea  before  they  return  to  their  ancestral  inland 
home  (Beauchamp's  Iroquois  Trail, page  ii ).  Whichever  tradition 
reflects  the  truth  they  both  assign  to  the  Iroquois  stock  a  tem- 
porary abode  where  Cartier  found  them  dwelling  in  the  first 
half  of  the  sixteenth  century.  In  further  confirmation  of 
this  tradition  we  find  Indian  tribes  belonging  to  the  same  stock 
occupying  the  seaboard  as  far  south  as  Florida.  The  Cherokees, 
for  instance,  possessed  ethnical  traits  and  exhibited  linguistic  pe- 
culiarities which  linked  them  to  the  Iroquois  stem.  They  also 
displayed  all  the  native  prowess  of  the  stock  from  which  they 
sprung.  But  while  these  offshoots  of  the  race,  as  we  presume  them 
to  have  been,  remained  on  the  seaboard,  the  race  itself  developed 
into  its  most  distinctive  type  in  the  tribes  of  the  Huron  and  of  the 
Iroquois  Confederations. 

The  Hurons,  when  first  known  distinctly  as  such,  occupied  the 
eastern  shore  of  the  Georgian  Bay  and  were  at  bitter  feud  with 
their  brethren  of  the  Five  Nations,  whose  stockaded  towns  ex- 
tended over  the  Genesee  and  Mohawk  valleys,  south  of  Lake  On- 
tario, almost  from  the  Niagara  river  to  the  Hudson.  There  was 
another  tradition  current  among  the  Hurons,  as  recorded  by  the 
Recollet  and  Jesuit  missionaries,  namely,  that  they  had  been  driven 
from  their  former  abode  on  the  St.  Lawrence  by  the  Senecas.  The 
Wyandott  historian,  Peter  Dooyentate,  states  that  the  Senecas 
even  occupied  with  the  Hurons  the  Island  of  Alontreal  (Sir  D. 
Wilson,  Transactions  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Canada,  vol.  2).  If, 
as  is  almost  certain,  the  stockade  of  Hochelaga  was  inhabited  by 
the  Hurons,  it  is  not  a  forced  conjecture  to  suppose  that  the  In- 
dians of  Stadacona  belonged  to  another  but  unfriendly  branch  of 
the  Iroquois  family,  possibly  the  ancestors  of  the  Senecas.  Their 
vacillating  relations  with  Cartier  would  be  thus  explicable.  At 
first  friendly,  they  assumed  a  suspicious  and  almost  hostile  attitude 
as  soon  as  he  expressed  a  determination  to  ascend  the  river  to  the 
headquarters  of  the  Hurons.  If  they  had  hostile  designs  against 
the  Hurons,  they  would  employ  every  device  of  Indian  diplomacy 
to  Div'vent  the  Frenchmen  with  arquebuses  and  cannon  from  form- 


THE   IRf)OUrS   CONFEDRRACY.  57 

ing  friendly  relations  with  their  foes.  Their  omission  to  propose 
an  offensive  alliance  and  a  warlike  expedition,  as  the  Algonquins 
did  to  Champlain  in  the  next  century,  may  have  been  due  to  the 
promptness  with  which  Cartier  acted,  and  the  indifference  he  dis- 
played to  their  co-operation. 

Iroquois  tradition  dates  the  formation  of  their  great  con- 
federacy back  to  the  fourteenth  or  fifteenth  centuries,  but  though 
the  first  imperfect  measures  of  union  may  then  have  been  formed, 
the  growth  and  consolidation  of  its  power  was  gradual.  Even 
after  its  normal  development  was  interrupted  by  European  inter- 
ference, we  see  the  Five  Nations  absorbing  a  sixth,  and  strength- 
ening the  depleted  forces  of  the  confederacy  by  the  incorporation, 
after  their  defeat,  of  a  distant  and  previously  hostile  branch  of  the 
race.  Although,  therefore,  the  confederacy  may  have  been  estab- 
lished in  the  Mohawk  country  and  the  ground  work  laid  of  its 
future  power,  it  was  probably  only  beginning  to  experience  the 
enormous  force  inherent  in  consolidation  when  Cartier  found  the 
Iroquois  occupying  the  valley  of  the  St.  Lawrence.  Its  astute 
statesmen,  for  such  they  doubtless  were,  had  formulated  the 
distinct  policy  of  gathering  into  a  restricted  area  of  superior 
agricultural  capabilities  and  strategical  position,  the  most  power- 
ful and  war-like  members  of  the  great  scattered  family.  Of  these 
members  the  Hurons  were  the  most  conspicuous,  but  they  were 
probably  so  powerful  and  numerous  as  to  be  unwilling  to  merge 
their  independence  in  the  rising  confederacy,  and  abandon  their 
favorable  site  at  the  junction  of  the  Ottawa  and  the  St.  Lawrence. 
Yet  if  they  refused  to  enter,  and  declined  to  consolidate  their 
forces  with  those  of  the  confederacy,  their  separate  existence 
would,  from  the  Iroquois  point  of  view,  be  a  standing  menace. 
They  would  be  certain  to  become  the  nucleus  of  another  con- 
federation which  would  be  hostile  to,  if  not  destructive  of, 
that  already  formed ;  the  aim,  therefore,  of  the  Mohawk  chiefs 
would  be  to  annihilate,  if  they  could  not  absorb,  their  separated 
brethren.  Cartier  tells  us  that  the  Hochelaga  tribe  v;hom  we  have 
supposed  to  be  Hurons  was  already  so  strong  as  to  dominate  the 
Indians  of  Stadacona  and  the  lower  St.  Lawrence.  The  Mohawk 
confederacy  had  thus  allies  already  made,  or  tribes  inclined  to 


58  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVEXTEENTII    CENTURY. 

be  allies,  in  the  kindred  Indians  to  the  east  of  Hochelaga.  In 
the  interval  between  Roberval's  departure  and  Champlain's  ap- 
pearance on  the  scene  the  Mohawk  confederation  probably  swept 
down  on  Hochelaga,  and,  with  the  aid  of  the  Stadacona-Iroquois, 
dislodged  the  Hurons  and,  obliged  them  to  migrate  to  some  other 
locality.  For  their  new  seat  the  Hiirons  would  naturally  choose 
some  locality  situated  at  what  they  considered  a  safe  distance  from 
the  Iroquois  canoes,  where  they  would  have  space  in  which  to  grow 
and  opportunity  to  create,  by  affiliation,  another  confederation  with 
which  to  oppose  their  implacable  enemies.  No  better  spot  could 
have  been  selected  than  the  shores  of  the  Georgian  Bay.  Between 
them  and  their  enemies  there  lay  not  only  Lake  Ontario,  but  the 
whole  Peninsula  of  western  Ontario,  peopled  by  the  Neutres,  the 
Tionontates  or  Petuns,  and  other  tribes  of  the  Iroquois  stock, 
who,  if  not  their  allies,  dreaded  the  power  of  the  confederacy  as 
acutely  as  they  did  themselves. 

The  story  of  what  befell  them  in  their  retreat  on  Lake  hLuron 
and  how  at  length  they  returned  to  the  St.  Lawrence  under  the 
protection  of  the  French,  forms  an  interesting  and  pathetic  part  of 
the  history  of  New  France  during  the  seventeenth  century.  In 
fact,  that  history  was  shaped  in  a  great  measure  by  the  complica- 
tions which  sprung  out  of  the  French  entanglements  in  Huron 
wars  and  politics.  These  subsequent  events  are  matters  of  history. 
The  tragedies,  however,  which  w-ere  enacted  in  this  dark  corner 
of  the  continent  during  the  half  century  or  more  of  obscuration, 
following  Cartier's  and  Roberval's  departure,  can  be  a  subject  for 
speculation  only.  But  it  is  a  dramatically  interesting  one.  We 
cannot  imagine  that  the  small  migratory  bands  of  hunters  with- 
out organization  or  policy,  whom  Champlain  found  on  the  St. 
Lawrence,  destroyed  the  stockaded  town  of  Hochelaga  after  sub- 
duing the  populous  tribes  of  Stadacona  and  its  vicinity.  It  was 
only  when  the  combined  strength  of  the  Iroquois  of  the  East 
and  of  the  West  had  crushed  the  Huron  Iroquois  that  the  poor 
wandering  IMicmacs,  or  whoever  the  Algonquins  may  have  been, 
ventured  to  enter  on  the  vacated  territory.  The  Stadacona  In- 
dians may  have  been  Senecas,  but,  whether  they  were  or  not, 
if  thev  were  the  allies  of  the  Mohawks  in  this  their  first  Huron 


CONSOLIDATION.  59 

war,  it  was  in  obedience  to  the  wise  policy  of  consolidation  that 
they  abandoned  their  home,  which  was  too  far  from  the  centre 
of  consolidation  to  be  safe,  and  removed  to  some  territory  contigu- 
ous to  that  already  occupied  by  the  confederated  nations.  More- 
over, if  they  were  the  tribe  afterwards  known  as  the  Senecas  they 
became  the  left  wing  of  the  forces  of  that  powerful  group  of  war- 
like communities,  and  occupied  the  shores  of  the  beautiful  lake 
of  that  name  to  the  west  of  the  Onondagas,  who  probably  then 
occupied  the  country  between  Oneida  and  Cayuga  lakes.  They 
therefore  formed  the  westerly  bulwark  between  the  other  mem- 
bers of  the  compact  and  the  Hurons.  They  must  have  been  the 
most  obnoxious  of  all  the  Iroquois  nations  to  that  most  harassed 
member  of  the  family.  It  was  consistent  therefore  with  the  ex- 
istence of  this  grudge  that  when  the  Hurons  in  1616  secured  the 
co-operation  of  Champlain  in  one  of  their  war-like  expeditions 
they  should  lead  him  to  attack  the  Senecas  or  Onondagas. 

If  my  supposition  be  correct,  the  65  years  of  dense  obscurity 
covered  the  critical  period  in  the  history  of  the  IMohawk  con- 
federacy. It  had,  we  may  assume,  been  created  and  its  general 
policy  formed  during  the  previous  centuries.*  That  policy  was 
to  incorporate  into  the  confederacy  friendly  branches  of  the  par- 
ent stock,  on  consideration  of  their  adopting  its  principles  and 
merging  their  own  individuality  into  the  unity  of  the  league,  but 
ruthlessly  to  crush  and,  if  possible,  annihilate  all  rivals.    The  con- 


*  Mons.  Laverdiere  in  the  note  to  page  1032  of  his  edition  of  Cham- 
plain,  in  explanation  of  Champlain's  statement  that  the  Iroquois  were  weary  of  the 
war  which  had  been  waged  for  over  50  years,  says:  "  This  passage  give  us,  at  least 
approximately,  the  date  of  the  famous  quarrel  to  which  Nicholas  Perrot  and  the 
Relation  of  1660  refer,  and  which  made  of  the  Algonquins  and  the  Iroquois  irre- 
concilable enemies.  This  would  assign  the  date  1570  to  this  profound  division,  if 
indeed,  it  was  not  a  revival  of  an  older  feud,  for  the  Indians  whom  Cartier  found 
in  the  country,  and  who  appear  to  have  been  called  'lesbons  Iroquois,' already  had 
as  enemies,  as  early  as  1535,  a  nation  living  to  the  south,  then  called  the  Touda- 
mans  (the  same  doubtless  as  the  Tsountouans  or  Tsonnontouans),  with  whom 
they  were  constantly  at  war."  I  think  it  more  likely  that  the  Toudamans  were  a 
band  of  the  Iroquois  who  became  involved  in  the  impending  racial  war. 

Father  I.e  Jeune,  in  the  Relation  of  1633,  says  that  a  Huron,  "Pierre  Paste 
decbouan,"  told  him  that  his  grandmother  used  to  relate  with  pleasure  the  aston- 
ishment with  which  the  Indians  saw  the  vessel  in  which  the  French  arrived  moving 
like  a  floating  i-land. 

Father  Lalemant,  in  Chapt.  II.  of  the  Relation  of  1660,  repeats  the  same 
tradition  as  Perrot. 


6o  OUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

federacy  probably  then  consisted  of  not  more  than  four  so  called 
nations.  But  just  as  it  was  becoming  sensible  of  the  power  of 
combination,  there  sprang  up  on  the  St.  Lawrence  another  high- 
ly organized  nation  with  similar  institutions  and  instincts,  and 
presumably  kindred  aims,  which  would  be  sure  to  gather  to  itself, 
in  a  rival  and  necessarily  hostile  combination,  the  tribe  or  tribes, 
presumably  the  Senecas,  occupying  the  lower  St.  Lawrence.  There 
were  already  signs  of  co-operation  at  the  period  of  Cartier's  third 
voyage.  We  have  seen  how  the  chief  of  Hochalai  was  com- 
bining with  the  chief  of  Stadacona  against  him.  There  was  evi- 
dently, therefore,  danger  to  the  Mohawk  supremacy  in  any  other 
confederation,  whether  it  were  grouped  around  the  Stadacona 
or  the  Hochelaga  tribe.  And  so,  by  means  of  diplomacy  and  war 
the  Huron  hopes  and  Huron  influence  were  crushed  and  the  Iro- 
quois of  Stadacona  were  first  secured  as  allies,  and  then  drawn 
in  from  the  St.  Lawrence  and  incorporated  into  the  Mohawk 
confederacy.  The  St.  Lawrence  allies  then  formed  the  fifth  na- 
tion of  the  league,  and  added  greatly  to  the  terror  which  its 
valor  and  discipline  cast  over  the  whole  middle  section  of  eastern 
North  America.  It  is  strange  that  events  and  incidents  so  im- 
portant and  so  recent  should  have  failed  to  be  recorded  by  the 
missionaries,  who  not  long  after  made  their  abode  among  the 
Hurons ;  for  oral  tradition  is  almost  undying  among  the  Indians, 
and  there  must  have  been  aged  men  and  women  on  the  Georgian 
Bay  who  had  been  born  at  Hochelaga  and  remembered  the  great 
migration.  But  the  spirit  of  historical  criticism  was  not  strong 
in  the  early  colonists  of  Xew  France,  even  Champlain  being 
no  exception.  Thus  it  came  about  that  a  complete  revolution  of 
the  most  momentous  kind,  and  one  which  produced  grave  con- 
sequences during  the  early  course  of  Canadian  history,  remains 
imtold  and  can  only  be  guessed  at — a  curious  example  of  how 
short  a  space  of  time  may  suffice  for  great  national  changes 
to  take  place,  and  all  record  of  them  to  be  obliterated,  if 
neither  architectural  monuments  nor  written  literature  exists  to 
commemorate  past  or  record  current  events.  \\'e  can  only  con- 
jure up  in  imac^ination  what  happened :  the  formal  councils  in 
the  lodges  of  the  Iroquois  and  Hurons :  the  protracted  negoti- 


AN    ERA  OF   STRUGGLE.  6l 

ations  between  the  rival  confederacies ;  the  gravity  and  earnest- 
ness of  the  warrior  delegates  as  they  discussed  the  alternatives  of 
peace  or  war ;  the  care  with  which  the  leaders  elaborated  their  plans 
of  campaign,  after  all  possible  alliances  had  been  secretly  made; 
the  attack  in  force  upon  the  Hochelaga  stockade ;  the  failure  to  de- 
stroy it  by  a  coup  de  main,  followed  by  the  ceaseless  harassment 
by  small  bands  of  Iroquois  of  every  party  of  Hurons  venturing 
beyond  the  stockade,  till  their  fields  lay  waste  and  the  river  with  its 
fish,  though  under  their  very  eyes,  became  virtually  inaccessible. 
The  Hurons  were  evidently  too  strong  to  be  conquered  and  anni- 
hilated, and  too  independent  to  accept  absorption,  but  yet  too  weak 
to  become  aggressive.  The  war  was  doubtless  waged  with  the 
same  fiendish  ingenuity  and  barbarous  cruelty  with  which  the  sec- 
ond war  against  the  same  Hurons  in  the  next  century  was  prose- 
cuted. Hochelaga  was  probably  not  abandoned  till  the  retreat  of 
those  of  its  defenders  who  survived  became  the  one  alternative  tO' 
annihilation.  When  they  decided  to  abandon  their  magnificent 
position,  magnificent  then  as  now,  at  the  meeting  of  the  two  great 
water-ways,  they  must  have  escaped  at  a  moment  when  their  ene- 
mies were  off  the  watch.  The  line  of  flight  must  have  been  by 
canoe  up  the  Ottawa  and  the  Mattawa  through  Lake  Nipissing 
and  down  the  French  river  into  land-locked  recesses  at  the 
Georgian  Bay,  which  they  evidently  thought  would  be  a  safe  re- 
treat. 

While  these  politicians  and  warriors  in  the  dense  forests  of 
America  were  framing  policies,  negotiating  alliances,  plotting 
one  another's  destruction,  waging  war  with  relentless  ferocity, 
and  watching  with  sleepless  vigilance  their  opportunity  to  kill  and 
torture ;  while  their  fleets  of  canoes  were  stealthily  moving  to 
points  of  attack  or  noiselessly  carrying  them  to  some  secluded 
place  of  safety  ;  while  the  game  of  statecraft  and  of  war  was  being 
played  with  no  great  world  looking  on  to  applaud  or  condemn,  but 
with  an  energy  as  intense  and  with  cunning  as  astute  as  if  the 
drama  were  being  enacted  on  a  vaster  field  and  the  issues  were  of 
world-wide  interest,  the  same  qualities  were  being  exercised  on  the 
other  side  of  the  sea,  but  amidst  different  surroundings  and  with 
dififerent  results.     Nevertheless  what  transpired  during  those  six- 


62  QUEBEC   IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

ty-five  years  in  the  hidden  recesses  of  that  great  silent  land — the 
building  up  of  the  Iroquois  confederacy,  the  migration  of  the 
Hurons  to  the  Georgian  Bay,  and  the  abandonment  of  the  St.  Law- 
rence were  incidents  of  no  slight  importance  in  giving  shape  and 
direction  to  the  early  history  of  New  France,  New  Amsterdam  and 
New  England. 

In  Europe  at  the  same  time  opposing  powers  and  principles 
were  gathering  themselves  together  into  hostile  camps  and  pre- 
paring to  transfer  their  quarrels  to  the  new  world,  where  they 
would  invade  those  same  dense  forests  and  traverse  those  same 
watery  highways  in  alliance  with  the  Indian  braves,  who  were 
simultaneously  being  consolidated  into  antagonistic  groups.  The 
reformation  in  religion  was  only  one  expression  of  the  great 
revolution  in  thought  and  morals  which  had  been  slowly  working 
in  Europe.  No  sooner  had  it  become  the  issue,  than  it  divided 
Europe  into  two  sections,  along  lines  mainly  racial.  Italy  and 
Spain  felt  feebly  the  new  impulse ;  France  was  convulsed,  but  the 
old  thought  succeeded  in  repressing  the  new.  In  Germany,  the 
Netherlands,  England,  the  Lowlands  of  Scotland,  and  Scan- 
dinavia, the  love  of  liberty  proved  stronger  than  the  love  of 
art,  and  the  appeal  to  private  judgment  more  attractive  than 
the  claims  of  tradition.  Some  of  the  Swiss  cantons  originated 
a  new  faith ;  others  adhered  to  the  old.  The  lines  of 
cleavage  did  not  follow  with  sufficient  accuracy  geographical 
or  racial  lines  to  permit  of  absolute  generalization ;  but,  roughly 
speaking,  the  so-called  Latin  races  remained  true  to  the  old 
Church ;  the  Teutonic  race  adopted  widely  different  systems  of 
theology  and  of  church  government.  When  the  Reformation, 
using  the  term  in  its  popular  sense,  was  accepted  by  a  nation  at 
large,  there  followed  in  its  wake  a  more  or  less  radical  political 
revolution.  The  abandonment  of  traditional  religion  seemed  al- 
ways to  result  in  a  weakening  of  faith  in  the  established  political 
system,  and  a  desire  to  throw  off  the  trammels  at  once  of  govern- 
mental subjection  and  ecclesiastical  control.  In  fact,  religious  re- 
volt was  usually  preceded  by  a  movement  in  the  direction  of  politi- 
cal freedom. 

Absolutism  in  an  extreme  form  continued  to  oppress  Spain,  and 


OPPOSING   POLITICS.  63 

was  riveted  by  lier  on  her  American  colonies.  A  more  moderate 
phase  of  it  gained  the  victory  in  France,  and  was  transferred  to 
New  France.  The  gradual  change  from  mediaeval  monarchy  to 
constitutional  rule,  and  from  Romanism  to  ritualistic  Protestant- 
ism, wah  worked  out  in  England,  with  one  great  oscillation 
toward  extremes,  in  politics  and  religion.  Strange  to  say, 
the  conflicting  tendencies  were  represented  in  her  two  groups 
of  North  American  settlers — those  of  Virginia  and  of  Ply- 
mouth Bay.  Thus  were  all  the  contending  forces  which  were 
disrupting  Europe  transferred  to  our  Western  wilds — here  on  an 
open  field,  under  entirely  new  conditions,  to  wreck  or  to  build 
into  mighty  nations,  the  weak,  isolated  communities  which  for  a 
time  could  barely  support  life  in  the  hard  struggle  with  savage 
nature  and  more  savage  men.  Here  also  was  to  be  gradually 
evolved  a  solution  which  has  never  yet  been  completely  realized  in 
Europe — a  free  church  in  a  free  State.  It  was  a  conception  so 
foreign  to  the  mind  of  the  sixteenth  century,  that,  though  con- 
formable to  the  principles  of  Protestantism,  and  certainly  to  the 
conception  of  the  primitive  church,  it  was  far  from  being  acted 
upon  even  in  the  Puritan  colonies.  Nevertheless  its  gradual 
realization  marked  the  steps  towards  real  freedom  and  prosperity 
in  the  North  American  settlements. 

It  was  during  the  interval  between  Cartier  and  Champlain 
that  the  schism  occurred  in  Europe  which  led  to  the  foundation  of 
New  France  under  most  intimate  church  and  State  alliance,  and 
of  New  England  under  principles  the  outcome  of  which  was 
the  complete  dissociation  of  Church  and  State.  Here,  there- 
fore, in  the  dense  forests  of  that  section  of  the  New  World  which 
had  escaped  absorption  because  of  its  forbidding  climate  and 
aspect,  representatives  of  the  two  extreme  wings  of  the  parties  then 
dividing  Europe  were  about  to  try  the  great  experiment  as  to 
which  is  most  conducive  to  national  progress  and  human  hap- 
piness— individual  freedom  of  thought  and  personal  participation 
in  government,  or  the  waiving  of  private  judgment  in  obedi- 
ence to  tradition,  ecclesiastical  authority,  and  paternal  rule. 
The  lines  of  demarcation  were  more  clearly  drawn  in  North 
America    than    in    Europe,    for    there    was    no    mixture    of   op- 


64  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

posing  religious  elements  in  eitlier  of  the  two  communities 
of  New  France  and  New  P2ngland.  The  New  England  colonists 
might  dispute  with  one  another  on  nice  points  of  theology,  but  they 
were  at  one  in  their  hostility  to  papacy  and  prelacy.  And  during 
the  sixty-five  years  of  obscuration  of  the  St.  Lawrence  region,  the 
civil  war  which  had  raged  in  old  France,  between  the  Huguenots 
and  the  Catholics,  had  terminated  with  results  so  disastrous  to  the 
former  that  a  royal  decree  ordained  that  no  heretic  should  be  al- 
lowed to  contaminate  the  soil  of  New  France,  or  instill  false 
doctrines  into  the  fallow  Indian  mind.  Nor  was  the  arbitrary 
exclusion  of  the  most  active  element  of  French  society  resented ; 
for  Frenchmen  were  as  a  nation  indifferent,  and  French  Prot- 
estantism was  perhaps  more  political  than  religious.  It  is  certain 
that  Henry  l\' .  would  not  have  found  the  French  so  willing  to 
follow  him  obediently  into  the  fold  of  dissent  as  the  English  were 
to  be  guided  by  Henry  VTII.  Henry  III.  was  assassinated  by  a 
tool  of  the  monkish  faction  because  he  had  made  concessions  to  his 
Huguenot  subjects.  When,  therefore,  Henry  IV.  ascended  the 
throne,  his  conviction  of  the  vast  preponderance  of  public  opinion 
in  favor  of  the  old  faith  must  have  been  one  of  the  arguments 
which  drove  him  to  renounce  the  Protestant  cause,  of  which  he 
had  been  so  illustrious  a  champion.  Another  doubtless  was  the 
determination  to  be  king  in  the  same  full  sense  in  which  his  pre- 
decessors had  been,  and  not  a  monarch  subject  to  a  Parliament,  as 
he  would  necessarily  be  if  a  Huguenot  king.  Of  the  two  evils,  he 
preferred  to  share  his  power  with  the  church  rather  than  with  a 
popular  assembly.  The  maximum  demands  of  the  church  he  could 
calculate  on ;  the  extravagant  and  ever-multiplying  demands  of  the 
Parliament,  who  could  estimate? 


CHAPTER  IV. 

Early  Trading  Companies  and  Champlain's  Apprentice- 
ship, J608-J6J2. 

Cartier's  voyages,  though  temporary  failures,  had  a  notable 
influence.  The  experience  of  the  gentlemen  adventurers  who  had 
accompanied  Roberval  was  so  different  from  that  of  the  Spanish 
colonists  of  rank  that  France  decided  she  must  offer  inducements 
in  the  way  of  trade  monopolies  if  her  great  domain  was  to  be  ex- 
plored and  colonized  by  private  enterprise.  Yet,  even  without 
this  stimulus,  the  commercial  spirit  which  was  awakened  under 
Francis  I.  never  again  slumbered,  though  to  the  French  merchant 
foreign  commerce  seems  not  to  have  been  as  congenial  as  domes- 
tic trade.  The  French  sailor  has  never  been  lacking  in  daring  or 
iseamanship.  No  service  ever  demanded  these  qualities  in  so 
high  a  degree  as  the  Newfoundland  fisheries ;  and  it  was  the 
Norman,  Breton  and  Basque  fishermen  who  first  followed  the 
Portuguese  in  drawing  on  the  almost  inexhaustible  treasures  of 
these  prolific  banks.  The  French  seaman  has  always  been  more 
ready  to  risk  his  life  than  the  French  merchant  to  venture  his 
savings  in  foreign  trade.  Whenever  the  latter  did  so  it  was 
usually  as  a  member  of  a  corporation  or  of  a  chartered  company 
with  exclusive  state  privileges  and  monopolies,  not  as  a  private 
individual. 

The  association  of  merchants  and  manufacturers  for  mutual 
protection  and  for  regulation  of  prices  was  a  phase  of  commercial 
life  all  over  Europe  throughout  the  Middle  Ages.  The  Hanseatic 
league  was  a  closer  and  more  comprehensive  corporation  than  any 
created  since.  In  the  twelfth  century  we  find  the  Basque  fisher- 
men combining  for  defense  and  aid,  and  even  pooling  their  profits. 
Yet  it  was  not  until  the  sixteenth  century,  after  the  discovery  of 
America  and  a  sea  route  to  the  Indies,  with  the  consequent  com- 
mercial  ascendancy   of   Spain   and    Portugal,    that   the   English, 


66  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

French  and  Dutch  were  instigated  by  jealousy  and  legitimate 
rivalry  to  extend  tlieir  commerce  beyond  the  seas.  That  these 
merchants  should  combine  was  an  inevitable  consequence  of  the 
incessant  wars  in  which  the  rival  nations  were  engaged,  of  the 
ambiguous  distinction  between  piracy  and  legitimate  naval  war- 
fare, and  of  the  resulting  insecurity  of  tlie  ocean  highways.  There 
was  safety  in  numbers  of  ships  and  division  of  risks.  But  the 
motives  and  methods  of  the  national  companies  differed  as  widely 
as  the  national  characteristics  of  their  shareholders.  Pierre  Bon- 
nassieux,  in  his  work,  "Les  GrandesCompagnies  de  Commerce," 
draws  broadly  the  distinction  between  the  French  and  the  Eng- 
lish and  Dutch  trading  companies.  He  says,  "When  we  come  to 
investigate  the  fundamental  features  which  distinguish  the  French 
companies  from  the  Dutch  and  English,  we  find  that  the  French 
commercial  companies  were  with  few  exceptions  the  direct  crea- 
tion of  the  government.  While  private  initiative  and  public  opin- 
ion contributed  to  the  formation  of  the  great  companies  of  the 
other  powers,  we  see  the  government  of  France  always  at  the 
head  of  every  enterprise  of  this  kind.  As  a  result  this  royal  inter- 
vention proclaims  itself  in  privileges  and  favors  of  all  kinds.  No 
country  has  suffered  in  like  manner  from  monopolies  so  rigorous, 
privileges  so  extreme,  as  France  under  the  Old  Regime.  The 
absence  of  all  spirit  of  freedom  of  trade  in  the  nation  at  large,  the 
vicious  system  of  land  tenure  in  the  colonies,  with  the  consequent 
blight  of  all  energy  and  perseverance  among  the  colonists,  relig- 
ious intolerance,  and  above  all  commercial  exclusiveness  were  the 
consequences  of  such  a  system  of  state  initiative  and  control. 
Trade  is  still  held  in  low  estimation  in  France,  and  rarely  will  a 
man  of  great  wealth  or  social  position  take  an  active  part  in  the 
management  of  a  great  company."  What  is  true  in  this  respect 
to-day  was  curiously  exemplified  four  centuries  ago,  when  the 
King,  to  combat  the  social  prejudices  against  trade,  offered  titles 
of  nobility  to  commoners  willing  to  risk  a  certain  sum  in  enter- 
prises which  the  government  was  fostering. 

No  country  can  without  fear  of  challenge  claim  priority  as 
the  initiator  of  great  commercial  companies.  Though  it  was  the 
success  of  Spain  and  Portugal  that  stimulated  other  countries, 


SCHEMES  OF   COLONIZATION.  67 

we  do  not  find  that  these  pioneers  did  much  to  favor  commercial 
corporations  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteentli  centuries.  The  com- 
pany of  the  Portuguese  Merchants  created  in  1443  by  Prince 
Henry  of  Portugal  to  found  factories  in  Africa  and  traffic  in  gold 
and  slaves  for  importation  into  the  Iberian  Peninsula ;  the  conces- 
sion given  to  certain  Flemish  merchants  by  Charles  V.  to  supply 
the  Spanish  colonies  with  negro  slaves,  and  the  Brazil  Company, 
created  by  Portugal  in  1649,  which  secured  to  her  control  of  a  vast 
section  of  South  America,  then  in  danger  of  falling  under  Dutch 
influence,  appear  to  sum  up  their  attempts  in  that  direction. 

It  is  lamentable  that  the  first  chartered  company  should  have 
been  organized  to  deal  in  human  flesh,  and  that  one  of  the  first  of 
the  English  naval  heroes  should  have  been  a  slave  hunter  and  a 
slave  trader.* 

In  the  sixteenth  century  France  was  the  first  Western  power 
to  obtain  by  capitulation  from  the  Porte  certain  exclusive  trade 
rights  in  the  Levant,  and  to  confer  on  an  organized  company  a 
monopoly  of  trading  in  that  region.  The  Frenchman  also  opened 
up  a  trade  in  coral  on  the  African  coast.  The  list  of  so-called 
"Regulated  Companies"  organized  in  England  in  the  sixteenth 
century  is  the  most  memorable.  It  comprises  the  African  Com- 
pany, organized  in  1536,  the  Russian  Company,  in  1556,  the 
Levant  Company,  in  1581.  The  constitution  of  these  "Regulated 
Companies"  allowed  any  member  to  trade,  within  the  sphere  of 
the  company's  rights  and  privileges,  on  his  own  account.  The 
Levant  was  the  last  of  these  important  corporations,  and  the 
famous  East  India  Company  was  the  first  of  the  great  English 
Stock  Companies.  It  dates  its  birth  from  the  very  last  day  of 
the  sixteenth  century.  But  all  these  corporations  were  trading,  not 
colonization,  companies. 

It  was  France  who  took  the  lead  as  a  colonizer  through  cor- 
porate co-operation.  She  had  contemplated,  as  we  have  seen, 
founding  a  colony  in  Canada  under  Cartier  and  Roberval.  But 
the  enterprise  did  not  assume  the  character  of  a  commercial  com- 

*Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert  sincerely  assigned  the  sowing  of  Christianity  as  the 
first  duty  of  the  explorer.  Yet,  judged  by  the  standards  of  to-day,  Sir 
Humphrey,  freebooter  and  slaveholder,  was  hardly  a  model  disciple  of  Christ. 


68  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

pany.  The  ships  and  funds  were  provided  by  the  French  Govern- 
ment. The  loss  through  the  faikire  of  this  attempt  may  have 
determined  the  Government  not  to  use  the  pubHc  funds  again 
directly  for  colonization  purposes.  The  next  colonization  schemes 
w^ere  those  of  Admiral  Coligny.  The  Government  did  not  sup- 
port, nor  yet  overtly  oppose,  the  two  disastrous  enterprises  con- 
ceived and  supported  by  the  Huguenots — the  first  to  Brazil  under 
Villegagnon  in  1555,  the  second  to  Florida  under  Ribaut  in  1560. 
The  motive  was  to  escape  religious  persecution,  and  had  they 
survived,  they  could  have  been  sustained  only  as  industrial  and 
commercial  enterprises,  under  Huguenot  influence  and  with  Hu- 
guenot capital.  France  might  thus  have  claimed  to  be  innocent 
of  disregarding  the  Bull  of  Alexander  \T.  They  failed,  however, 
and  the  French  Government  decided  to  restrict  its  sphere  of  oper- 
ations on  the  North  American  Continent,  to  the  land  lying  so  far 
north  that  neither  Spain  nor  Portugal  would  envy  her  possession. 
The  growing  importance  of  the  Newfoundland  fisheries  also  at- 
tracted her  to  those  less  genial  regions. 

After  Roberval's  failure  the  French  had  never  actually  re- 
treated from  the  St.  Lawrence  as  traders,  for  Cartier  had  pointed 
out  the  road  to  the  Saguenay.  Others  discovered  the  fur  coun- 
try of  which  it  was  the  outlet.  But  no  active  attempt  to  found  a 
settlement  was  again  made  in  the  sixteenth  century.  Hakluyt 
has  preserved  for  us  two  letters  of  Cartier's  nephew,  Jacques 
Noel,  which  refer  to  certain  operations  in  Canada ;  and  according 
to  Lescarbot,  the  said  Jacques  Noel  and  his  relative,  the  Sieur  de 
la  Journaye,  obtained  from  Henry  HI.  in  1588  a  monopoly  of  the 
fur  trade,  on  condition  of  their  establishing  a  colony  in  Canada. 
This  commission,  if  really  given,  was  cancelled  before  its  expiry, 
for  Henry  I\"..  in  1598,  conferred  the  commission  of  King's  Lieu- 
tenant, with  all  the  high-sounding  powers  and  privileges  with 
which  Roberval  had  been  endowed,  on  Le  Sieur  Marquis  de  la 
Roche  de  Bretagne.  Lescarbot,  commenting  on  this,  considers 
that  it  was  a  proof  of  the  want  of  French  public  spirit  in  maritime 
afifairs,  that  in  1585  the  Sieur  de  la  Journaye  Chaton  and  Jacques 
Noel,  nephews  and  heirs  of  Cartier  lost,  at  the  instigation  of  the 
merchants  of  St.  Malo,  the  exclusive  privileges   of  trading  with 


A  QUESTION  OF   MONOPOLY.  69 

the  Indians,  which  had  been  granted  them  for  twelve  years. 
The  heirs  of  Cartier  based  their  claim  on  the  fact  that  they  were 
endeavoring  to  carry  on,  at  their  own  expense,  the  exploration 
begun  by  their  illustrious  uncle ;  that  they  had  lost  a  fleet  of  three 
or  four  boats  by  fire,  and  that  it  w^as  only  fair  that  the  King 
should  renew  in  their  favor  the  commission  granted  to  Cartier, 
considering  that  he  had  expended  on  the  expedition  of  1640  six- 
teen hundred  and  thirty-eight  livres  more  than  he  had  received. 
This  is  the  only  hint  we  find  that  Cartier  himself  enjoyed  any 
trading  privileges.  The  St.  Malo  merchants  claimed  that  the 
monopoly  was  unfair  to  their  mariners,  who  had  invested  money 
in  the  fur  trade.  Lescarbot  says :  "It  is  argued  that  we  must 
not  tamper  with  the  liberty  common  to  all  men  who  are  willing 
to  engage  without  trammel  in  foreign  commerce ;  but  I  want  to 
know  which  is  to  be  preferred — the  propagation  of  the  Christian 
religion  and  the  spread  of  French  influence,  or  the  selfish  interests 
of  a  greedy  merchant,  who  does  nothing  either  for  God  or  the 
King.  As  a  result,  that  beautiful  Dame  Liberty  prevents  these 
poor,  erring  souls  becoming  Christians,  and  has  interfered  with 
the  planting  of  French  colonies,  where  our  own  people  would 
have  found  homes,  instead  of  being  driven  to  carry  aching  hearts 
into  Germany,  Flanders,  England  and  elsewiiere.  And  it  is  due 
to  this  same  Dame  Liberty  and  the  jealousy  of  our  merchants  that 
beaver  skins  are  selling  to-day  at  eight  and  one-half  livres 
($1.70),  while  at  the  date  of  Jacques  Noel's  commission  they 
were  worth  about  fifty  sous  (two  and  a  half  livres).  Of  a  cer- 
tainty, if  we  deem  the  Christian  faith  and  religion  to  be  of  any 
account,  it  is  worth  while  contributing  something  to  those  who 
risk  their  lives  and  fortunes  in  advancing  its  interests  and  the 
public  weal."  The  arguments  pro  and  con  have  very  much  the 
ring  of  the  arguments  for  and  against  trusts  and  monopolies  in 
the  present  day. 

The  trade,  however,  on  the  Banks  had  grown  so  active  that 
the  idea  of  colonizing  Canada  was  probably  never  completely 
lost  sight  of.  Gosselin,  in  his  Marine  Normande,  says : 
"There  was  great  activity  in  cod  fishing,  for  from  1543  to 
1545  two  vessels  sailed  daily  during  January  and  February  of 


yO  QUEBEC    IX    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

those  years  from  the  ports  of  Rouen,  Havre,  Harfleur  and  Dieppe. 
After  this  trade  languished,  but  shortly  revived  with  augmented 
activity,  and  large  ships  even  up  to  150  tons  burden  were  built  for 
the  Newfoundland  fishery  after  1560.  This  seems  to  have  stimu- 
lated the  Government  to  re-occupy  Canada,  for  in  the  Archives  of 
Rouen  there  is  a  notarial  check  for  the  sale  from  Robert  Gouel  to 
Guilleaume  le  Beau,  the  Receiver-General  of  Finance  of  the  King, 
of  a  quantity  of  tools  for  transportation  to  New  France,  whither 
the  King  will  send  them  shortly  for  his  services.  This  purchase 
was  supplementary  to  the  purchase  of  a  supply  of  arms,  for  on 
April  7th  Johan  Garnier,  Lieutenant  of  the  Company  of  Captain 
Legrange,  gave  a  receipt  to  the  same  Guilleaume  le  Beau  for  400 
livres  to  be  spent  in  the  purchase  of  arquebuses  and  ammunition 
needed  by  the  French  infantry,  which  it  was  the  pleasure  of  the 
good  King  to  send  shortly  to  New  France  for  the  defense  there- 
of." No  record  of  the  contemplated  expedition  has  been  found, 
and  the  project,  it  is  probable,  was  not  unwisely  abandoned  as 
being  on  too  small  a  scale  for  success. 

The  Sieur  de  la  Roche  enjoyed  but  an  empty  honor  in  his 
commission,  for  he  never  extended  his  viceroyalty  beyond  Sable 
Island,  where  he  left  part  of  his  miserable  colonists  to  starve. 
One  year  sufificed  to  extinguish  his  hopes,  and  sweep  away  a  large 
share  of  his  fortune,  for  in  1599  his  commission  w^as  cancelled, 
and  certain  exclusive  rights  of  trade  in  furs  with  the  Indians  of 
the  Saguenay  were  given  to  Sieur  Chauvin,  "a  man  well  skilled 
in  navigation  and  who  had  served  his  Majesty  faithfully  in  bygone 
wars,  even  though  he  was  of  the  so-called  Reformed  Religion,"  so 
says  Champlain.  He  associated  himself  with  the  Sieur  du  Pont- 
grave,  another  confessed  heretic.  Their  main  object  being  to 
trade  with  the  Indians  of  the  Saguenay  for  furs,  they  built  a  small 
house  at  Tadousac,  and  took  the  initial  steps  towards  founding  a 
settlement  at  that  point,  which  since  the  days  of  Cartier  had  been 
the  rendezvous  in  springtime  of  the  Indian  and  French  traders. 
Another  partner  was  Pierre  Dugas,  Sieur  de  Monts  de  Saintonge, 
who  will  reappear  in  our  narrative  as  a  promoter  of  more  import- 
ant schemes,  but  who  accompanied  this  expedition  rather  out  of 
curiosity  than  with  any  commercial  object. 


TRADING  IN  THE  ST.  LAWRENCE.  yi 

Both  Pontgrave  and  he  dearly  saw  that,  as  the  rocks  of  Tadou- 
sac  could  hardly  support  the  stunted  spruce,  an  agricultural  col- 
ony there  would  thrive  but  poorly.  Champlain  quaintly  remarks 
that  Tadousac  is  more  noted  for  its  cold  than  for  any  other  of  its 
products,  inasmuch  as,  for  every  ounce  of  frost  that  other  localities 
can  furnish,  Tadousac  can  supply  a  pound.  The  two  junior 
partners,  moved  by  these  considerations,  suggested  that  Chauvin, 
as  he  had  on  a  previous  voyage  ascended  the  river  to  Three 
Rivers,  should  explore  the  main  river  in  search  of  a  more  eligible 
site.  The  views,  however,  of  that  thrifty  adventurer  were  limited 
to  making  money  out  of  the  fur  and  fishing  trades.  He  did  not 
aspire  to  founding  an  empire,  and  therefore  refused  to  do  more 
than  build  a  house  to  protect  the  unfortunates  who  were  to  be  left 
behind  to  face  the  misery  of  the  winter.  This  done,  the  three 
partners  sailed  back  to  France.  The  winter  quarters  of  the  set- 
tlers in  this  dreary  wilderness  proved  warm  enough,  but  food  was 
scarce.  Eleven  died,  and  the  remainder  had  to  leave  their  shanty 
and  live  on  the  charity  of  the  Indians.  But  spring  returned,  and 
with  it  the  ships. 

A  second  prosperous  voyage  was  made  in  1600,  and  a  third  on 
a  more  extensive  scale  was  being  planned,  when  Chauvin  was 
seized  with  a  mortal  illness,  and  the  enterprise  died  with  its 
founder.  All  that  Champlain  can  find  fault  with  in  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  undertaking  is  that  a  heretic  should  have  been  sent 
forth  to  convert  the  Canadian  Indians  to  the  Holy  Catholic  Apos- 
tolic and  Roman  Church, — a  paradox  no  doubt,  if  we  are  to  take 
seriously  the  religious  platitudes  with  which  all  the  commercial 
concessions  are  prefaced,  and  which  a  free  thinker  like  Marc  Les- 
carbot,  and  libertines  like  Francis  I.  and  some  of  his  successors, 
used  as  glibly  as  any  of  the  ecclesiastical  statesmen  or  the  really 
pious  Recollet  and  Jesuit  missionaries.  It  is  not  accidental  that 
these  pioneers  should  have  been  heretics.  That  same  spirit  of  inde- 
pendence which  instigated  the  revolt  against  the  authority  of  the 
Church  and  against  monarchical  absolutism  impelled  them  to  seek 
fortune  in  new  and  more  hazardous  ventures  than  their  more 
conservative  fellow  merchants  of  the  Catholic  faith. 

Chauvin  dead,  another  suppliant  for  exclusive  trade  privileges 


72  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

immediately^appeared  in  the  person  of  Commandeiir  Sieur  de 
Chastes,  Governor  of  Dieppe,  who  promised,  in  return  for  the 
usual  monopoly,  to  explore  the  Upper  St.  Lawrence  and  its  rap- 
ids, which  had  heretofore  impeded  all  advance  beyond  the  old 
stockade  of  Hochelaga.  The  undertaking  was  onerous,  so  de 
Chastes  associated  with  himself  some  responsible  merchants  of 
Rouen,  and  gave  the  first  command  to  Pontgrave,  Chauvin's  old 
lieutenant,  who  had  navigated  the  river  as  far  up  at  least  as  the 
Saguenay.  While  the  expedition  was  being  fitted  out  de  Chastes 
met  a  sailor  who  had  just  returned  from  a  voyage  of  two  and  a 
half  years  to  Mexico  and  the  South  Seas,  and  whom  he  rightly 
judged  to  be  well  fitted  to  take  an  active  part  in  his  venture. 
As  soon  as  the  latter  had  obtained  his  discharge  from  naval  duty 
he  joined  Pontgrave  and  set  sail  for  the  St.  Lawrence.  This  was 
in  1603.  The  adventurous  seafarer,  then  in  the  prime  of  life,  was 
destined  to  justify  de  Chastes'  judgment  of  his  character  and  to 
fill  ably  the  place  de  Chastes  had  dreamed  of  himself  occupying. 
His  name  was  Samuel  de  Champlain,  and  the  record  tells  us  that 
he  was  born  at  Brouage,  a  seaport  of  Saintonge,  not  far  south 
of  La  Rochelle,  in  the  year  1567. 

Fortunately  for  posterity  the  sailor  was  also  a  scholar  and  a 
most  graphic  writer.  For  twenty-nine  years,  until  1632,  three 
years  before  his  death,  we  have  in  his  own  words  the  charmingly 
told  story  of  the  vicissitudes  of  the  struggling  colony  of  which  he 
was  the  parent,  and  over  which  he  watched  with  all  a  parent's 
solicitude  until  the  close  of  his  life.  The  incidents  of  this  his  first 
voyage  to  the  St.  Lawrence  were  given  in  detail  in  his  work, 
"Des  Sauvages,"  and  repeated  in  the  more  condensed  narrative 
of  his  voyages,  published  in  1632.  Pontgrave  was  in  command 
and  Champlain  his  lieutenant.  They  opened  trade  with  the  In- 
dians at  Tadousac ;  then  ascended  the  river,  cast  anchor  at  Que- 
bec, by  him  first  mentioned  under  that  name,  where  the  river  of 
Canada  (St.  Lawrence)  narrows  to  some  3,000  feet  in  width. 
Above  Quebec  Champlain  describes  minutely  the  features  of  the 
river  and  its  tributaries,  the  Batiscan  and  Richelieu ;  he  also  men- 
tions ]\Iontreal,  but  tells  not  a  word  of  the  vanished  stockade  of 
Hochelaga.     They  made  an  unsuccessful  attempt  to  mount  the 


CHAMPLAIN,   NAVIGATOR  AND  EXPLORER,  73 

rapids,  then  returned  to  Tadousac,  took  on  board  a  cargo  of  furs, 
and  sailed  for  Harfleur,  only  to  find  that  de  Chaste  had  died  on 
the  13th  of  May,  1603,  shortly  after  their  departure,  and  while 
the  ships  were  battling  with  the  wintry  gales  in  the  Gulf  of  the 
St.  Lawrence.  With  de  Chaste  expired  his  commission  and  all 
efforts  by  his  partners  to  live  up  to  it  and  fulfill  its  conditions. 

At  once  another  actor  steps  upon  the  stage.  De  Monts, 
Chauvin's  old  partner,  had  been  satisfied  with  his  one  trip  to 
Tadousac  for  a  pastime.  His  commission  was  dated  the  same 
year  that  Chauvin's  expired.  It  is  certain,  therefore,  that  these 
enterprising  Huguenots  wasted  no  time,  and  were  as  diligent  in 
business  as  they  were  fervent  in  spirit.  Associating  with  himself 
in  the  enterprise  a  number  of  merchants  of  La  Rochelle  and  Rouen 
of  his  own  faith,  he  sent  one  vessel  to  trade  with  the  Indians 
at  Tadousac,  while  he,  with  the  aid  of  Champlain,  the  old  pilot, 
Pontgrave,  and  Sieur  de  Poutrincourt,  undertook  the  hopeless 
task  of  founding  a  colony  on  the  Atlantic  seaboard,  as  a  medium 
for  spreading  the  Holy  Catholic  faith,  though  it  was  at  the  same 
time  to  be  conducted  on  the  principles  of  religious  liberty 
and  equality,  which  the  reformers  were  then  talking  so 
much  about,  and  themselves  practising  so  indifferently.  He 
enlisted  a  number  of  artisans  and  peasants,  and  for  their  spiritual 
guidance  employed  both  a  Roman  Catholic  priest  and  a  minister 
of  the  reformed  faith.  The  whole  company  composed  a  crew  of 
as  incompetent  settlers  and  as  incongruous  leaders  as  ever  started 
out  on  a  bootless  errand.  Champlain  may  not  have  been  a  man 
of  sound  doctrine  himself.  If  he  was  not  slightly  infected  by  the 
new  notions,  he  was  at  least  a  liberal  Catholic  and  a  shrewd 
man  of  the  world ;  in  any  case  his  reflections  on  de  Monts' 
failure  can  hardly  be  gainsaid.  They  were  to  the  effect  that  the 
example  of  two  opposing  religions  is  never  conducive  to  the  glory 
of  God  in  the  sight  of  the  heathen,  whom  the  belligerent  mission- 
aries are  endeavoring  to  convert.  "I  have  seen  our  curate  and 
our  missionary  coming  even  to  blows  in  defense  of  their  opinions. 
I  cannot  venture  to  decide  which  was  the  bravest  man,  and  which 
gave  the  hardest  knocks,  but  this  I  do  know,  that  the  minister 
often  grumbled  to  Dupont  about  having  been  beaten,  and  yet 


y^  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY, 

insisted  on  discussing  the  points  in  controversy."  The  Indians 
took  sides,  and  the  French  colonists  stood  up  for  their  respective 
opinions  and  champions,  while  Dupont  and  Chaniplain  had  to  do 
their  best  to  make  peace  between  the  warring  factions. 

One  of  Champlain's  comrades  in  Acadia,  and  one  of  his  close 
friends,  was  that  good-natured  philosopher  and  skeptic,  Lescar- 
bot,  who,  reflecting  on  the  same  subject,  says  "it  is  difficult — well 
nigh  impossible — to  make  all  men  think  alike,  especially  on  mat- 
ters subject  to  diverse  interpretation.  The  Emperor  Charles  V., 
after  the  diet  of  Augsburg,  and,  after  trying  in  vain  to  effect  the 
impossible,  in  molding  men's  opinions  into  one  fashion,  retired 
from  the  world  and  buried  himself  in  a  monastery,  employing  his 
leisure  in  making  clocks;  but  ere  long  he  found  it  as  difficult  to 
make  all  his  clocks  strike  in  unison,  though  designed  on  the  same 
model  and  manufactured  by  the  same  hand,  as  he  had  found  it  to 
secure  harmony  in  the  opinions  of  his  subjects."  Even  that  earn- 
est Recollet  missionary,  the  Reverend  Father  Sagard,  cannot  help 
joking  upon  this  subject,  when  he  tells  us  that,  a  priest  and  a  min- 
ister dying  within  a  short  time  of  one  another,  their  irreverent 
flock  buried  them  in  the  same  grave  and  watched  to  see  whether 
they,  who  during  life  had  quarreled  so  incessantly,  could  at  length 
rest  together  in  peace. 

The  Breton  merchants,  meanwhile,  were  opposing  these  mon- 
strous monopolies ;  the  clergy  at  the  same  time  were  representing 
the  absurdity  and  wickedness  of  subsidizing  heretics  to  spread  the 
true  faith ;  and  thus,  through  one  influence  and  another,  de  Monts' 
commission  was  revoked.  His  failure  to  reconcile  the  ir- 
reconcilable must  have  persuaded  even  so  pronounced  a  lati- 
tudinarian  as  Henry  IV.  of  the  impossibility  of  combining  mem- 
bers of  opposing  religious  sects  in  colonization  enterprises,  one  of 
the  avowed  purposes  of  which  was  always  to  evangelize  the  na- 
tives. Champlain's  experience  in  Acadia,  of  the  intractable  char- 
acter of  clergymen,  whether  priests  of  Rome,  claiming  in- 
fallibility by  virtue  of  their  ordination  by  a  bishop  of  apostolic 
descent,  or  ministers,  basing  their  infallibility  on  their  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Bible,  must  have  influenced  him  when  he  came  himself 
to  be  a  commander.     He  may  have  had  Huguenot  leanings.     He 


RIVAL  CREEDS   IN   THE   WILDERNESS.  75 

probably  had ;  but  as  a  Governor,  under  commission  from  a  Ro- 
man Catholic  king  and  statesman,  he  recognized  the  incompata- 
bility  of  theological  discord  and  civil  harmony,  and  consequently 
acquiesced  in  the  provision  that  excluded  Huguenots  from  the 
future  colony  of  Canada.  Mankind  has  not  yet  learned  to  prac- 
tise the  forbearance  necessary  to  real  civil  and  religious  liberty ; 
nor,  in  the  height  of  the  contest  between  the  forces  of  tradition 
and  of  reason,  when  each  side  had  to  stand  by  its  position  without 
faltering,  could  it  be  expected  that  allowance  would  be  made 
for  possible  error  in  one's  premises  or  conclusions ;  or  the  least 
distrust  be  admitted  as  to  the  validity  of  one's  authorities.  The 
innumerable  compromises  upon  which  tolerance  must  rest  were 
not  in  accordance  with  the  spirit  of  the  age.  The  tone  of  half 
cynical  open-mindedness  which  we  enjoy  in  Erasmus,  and  yet 
cannot  admire,  even  when  compared  with  the  uncompromising 
bigotry  of  his  opponents  in  his  own  church,  could  not  express  the 
spirit  of  a  revolutionary  period.  Such  men  as  the  narrow-minded 
Carmelite,  Egmont,  whom  Erasmus  has  pilloried  to  all  ages  as  the 
embodiment  of  ignorance  and  spleen,  were  fighting  for  the  very 
life  of  the  venerable  institutions  of  which  they  were  the  servants, 
and  of  necessity  they  were  bigoted.  On  the  other  hand  Luther 
and  Calvin  and  John  Knox  knew  instinctively  that  they  were  the 
pioneers  of  a  great  movement,  which  was  to  liberate  man  from  the 
bondage  of  caste  and  superstition,  though  they  could  not  possibly 
foresee  the  full  political  result  of  the  theological  controversy  they 
had  excited.  Their  thoughts  were  concentrated  on  the  divine 
message  they  believed  they  were  delegated  to  deliver  as  they  read 
it  in  the  Bible.  In  their  own  estimation,  they  were  more  directly 
under  the  divine  guidance  than  the  priests.  They  were  quite  as 
certain  as  any  priest  could  be  of  the  impregnability  of  their  as- 
sumed position — in  other  words,  as  bigoted.  For  in  a  time  of  re- 
volution toleration  is  the  most  intolerable  of  all  vices.  It  is  cow- 
ardice under  the  garb  of  charity. 

Champlain  was  not  bigoted.  None  of  his  actions  reveal  him 
in  that  character.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  neither  was  he  an 
eighteenth  century  skeptic,  nor  a  nineteenth  century  latitudinarian 
in  theology  and  politics.     He  was  a  soldier  and  a  civil  governor, 


^6  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

and  knew  the  value  of  harmony  and  obedience.  It  is  only  as  time 
advances  that  we  can  see  in  his  narrative  a  tendency  towards 
greater  rigidity.  He  had  seen  the  freebooter  Argall  sweep  down 
upon  his  old  friends  at  Mount  Desert  and  Port  Royal  in  Acadia  in 
1613-1614,  destroying  and  relentlessly  carrying  them  off  into  cap- 
tivity in  the  name  of  God  and  King  James.  And  what  he  wit- 
nessed in  the  neighbouring  colony  of  New  England  must  have 
convinced  him  of  the  wisdom  of  maintaining  uniformity  of  eccle- 
siastical rule,  even  if  he  could  not  command  absolute  unity  of 
theological  opinion  in  the  little  community  which  he  governed. 
He  could  not,  from  his  point  of  view  as  a  Frenchman  imbued 
with  the  spirit  of  French  bureaucracy,  duly  appreciate  the  merits 
and  foresee  the  ultimately  beneficent  consequences  of  the  New 
England  system  in  its  application  to  matters  of  state  as  well  as  of 
Church.  What  did  happen  before  Champlain's  death  was  that  the 
theological  intolerance  of  Massachusetts  had  grown  to  such  a 
height,  that  within  a  few  years  afterwards  Roger  Williams 
could  secure  the  freedom  he  demanded  only  by  branching  off  from 
the  Colony  of  Plymouth  and  founding  a  church  and  state  of  his 
own  in  Rhode  Island ;  that  Thomas  Hooker  was  driven  to  plant 
the  New  Hartford  Colony,  where  he  could  breathe  more  freely 
apart  from  the  narrowness  of  the  Massachusetts  churchmen  ;  while 
John  Davenport  was  moved  to  go  forth  into  the  wilderness  and 
establish  the  colony  of  New  Haven  under  a  rule  still  more  the- 
ocratic than  that  of  the  original  Massachusetts  system,  though  it 
also  made  church  membership  the  qualification  of  citizenship. 
Champlain,  however,  had  occasion  to  learn,  before  he  ended  his 
career,  that  peace  and  harmony  do  not  always  prevail  even  within 
the  bosom  of  the  Holy  Roman  Catholic  Church  itself ;  for,  while 
maintaining  unity  of  doctrine,  its  officers  in  New  France  and  else- 
where found  themselves  widely  at  variance  as  to  the  expediency  of 
certain  rules  and  practices.  A  tonsure  will  no  more  circumscribe 
men's  thoughts  than  a  soutane  or  a  cowl  obliterate  human 
passion. 

But  to  return  to  Champlain's  apprenticeship  for  the  work  that 
lay  before  him.  For  three  years  he  shared  the  fitful  fortunes  of 
his  countrymen  in  Acadia,  employed  chiefly  in  exploring  the  deep 


CIIAMPLAIN   SAILS  FOR  QUEBEC.  ^J 

indentations  of  the  rugged  coast  of  the  present  New  Brunswick 
and  Maine.  When  he  returned  to  France  in  1607  he  reported 
himself  to  his  master,  de  Monts.  Just  at  that  moment  a  pious 
woman,  Madame  de  Guercheville,  wife  of  the  Duke  de  la  Roche- 
foucault  de  Liancourt,  in  the  fulness  of  her  zeal  for  the  spread  of 
Christianity  among  the  Indians  through  the  agency  of  the  Jesuits, 
was  contemplating  the  devotion  of  3,600  livres  to  that  good  end, 
under  the  direction  of  Father  Coton.  De  Monts  tried  to  induce 
the  pious  almoner  to  invest  her  funds  in  his  venture,  and  Cham- 
plain  must  have  added  his  persuasion,  for  he  reflected  long  after- 
wards that  all  the  misfortune  that  befell  the  French  in  Acadia; 
Argall's  victory;  the  transportation  of  the  captives  to  Virginia, 
and  a  host  of  other  mishaps  w-ould  have  been  avoided  had  the 
good  lady  given  her  3,000  livres  towards  the  foundation  of  Que- 
bec, so  far  from  the  seaboard,  and  beyond  the  ken  and  rapacity,  as 
he  thought;  of  the  English  colonists.  But  she  was"  too  orthodox 
to  entrust  her  contribution  for  foreign  missions  to  an  avowed 
Huguenot  and  his  lukewarm  lieutenants.  De  Monts  was  com- 
pelled, therefore,  to  depend  upon  his  own  resources. 

Upon  Champlain's  advice  he  abandoned  the  Atlantic  coast  in 
favor  of  the  St.  Lawrence.  Champlain's  argument  was  that  the 
English  were  fishing  at  a  distance  of  only  thirteen  or  fourteen 
leagues  from  Mount  Desert,  and  that  the  Atlantic  settlers  were 
therefore  in  constant  danger  from  their  rapacious  instincts  and 
habits.  Under  this  new  project,  de  Monts.  in  1608,  fitted  out  two 
vessels  in  Honfleur,  committed  the  command  of  the  expedition  to 
Champlain,  and  entrusted  one  of  the  ships  to  Pontgrave,  as  well 
he  might,  for  that  old  sailor  had  taken  part  in  three  previous 
enterprises,  knew  every  feature  of  the  gulf  and  river,  and  was 
thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  habits  and  tastes  of  the  Indians. 
The  aim  of  the  expedition  was  to  colonize  as  well  as  to  trade,  but 
again  money-making  was  more  important  than  empire-making  to 
the  men  who  had  risked  their  fortunes  in  the  enterprise;  and  it  is 
not  surprising  to  find  that  for  many  a  year  the  higher  motive  was 
subordinate  to  the  meaner.  Pontgrave  preceded  Champlain,  who 
reached  Tadousac  on  the  3d  of  June.  His  lieutenant  had  before 
his  arrival,  in  pursuance  of  the  King's  orders,  forbidden  Basque 


78  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

vessels,  already  in  the  port,  to  trade  for  peltries  with  the  Indians ; 
but  the  Basques,  under  their  leader  Darache,  not  only  disregarded 
his  command,  but  fired  on  Pontgrave's  ship,  wounded  him,  killed 
a  number  of  his  crew  and  boarded  his  vessel,  from  which  they 
removed  the  cannon  and  all  dangerous  weapons.  Champlain,  not 
wishing  to  run  the  risk  of  wrecking  his  whole  enterprise,  com- 
promised with  the  unruly  aggressor,  and,  while  a  schooner  of 
twelve  or  fourteen  tons  was  being  built  in  which  to  pursue  his 
journey  up  the  St.  Lawrence,  he  explored  the  Saguenay. 

On  June  30th  Champlain  left  Tadousac,  and  sailing  up  the 
South  Channel,  anchored  on  the  3d  of  July  at  Quebec,  and  at  once 
chose  a  spot  for  his  first  building.  Champlain  tells  the  story  of 
his  voyage  in  detail  in  his  edition  of  1613,  but,  in  the  narrative 
published  in  1632,  he  dismisses  in  very  few  words  what  must  be 
regarded  as  one  of  the  most  momentous  of  the  many  epoch-making 
voyages  of  that  age  of  adventure,  seeing  that  in  digging  the  foun- 
dation of  his  "habitation,"  he  founded  the  capital  of  New  France, 
and  gave  birth  to  a  new  power  in  the  Western  World.  "I  selected," 
he  says,  "a  spot  where  the  river  is  narrowest,  and  which  the  natives 
called  Quebec,  and  there  I  commenced  to  build  and  cultivate  a 
patch  of  ground,  after  clearing  away  the  forest."  But  he  adds : 
'^IWhile  we  were  moiling  and  toiling  amid  hardship  and  worry, 
many  looked  back  to  France  to  see  what  was  there  being  done 
towards  furthering  the  enterprise."  Unquestionably  this  was  the 
attitude  from  first  to  last — looking  to  France  to  see  what  was  being 
done,  and  to  inquire  what  was  to  be  done  next.  Quebec  in  truth 
was  for  many  a  day  a  mere  trading  post ;  as  clearly,  therefore,  as 
the  material  available  permits,  we  must  learn  the  character  and 
constitution  of  those  trading  companies  which  nominally  support- 
ing it,  in  reality  retarded  its  development ;  and  of  those  earlier 
trading  and  colonization  enterprises  whose  rapid  succession  we 
have  briefly  described. 

In  the  instructions  given  to  Cartier  and  Roberval,  as  we  have 
seen,  there  is  not  a  hint  of  any  inducement,  in  the  shape  of  mon- 
opoly in  trade  or  exemption  from  duty  or  imposts,  ofifered  to  mer- 
chants to  engage  in  their  voyages.  Cartier's  first  and  second  voy- 
age>^  were  simply  voyages  of  discovery;  the  third,  under   or  in 


AN   EMPTY  COMMISSION.  79 

co-operation  with,  Roberval,  was  undertaken  to  found  a  colony  at 
the  expense  of  the  Crown,  though  perhaps  Roberval  and  some  of 
his  noble  associates  contributed.  It  was  so  costly  that  the  Home 
Government  does  not  appear  to  have  ever  repeated  the  experiment 
in  North  America.  The  profits  of  the  trade  in  furs  were  suffi- 
cient to  induce  the  merchants  of  the  northern  ports  of  France  to 
engage  in  it,  either  exclusively,  or  as  subsidiary  to  their  fishing 
enterprises,  without  inducement  from  Government.  But  what 
the  successors  of  Francis  I.  wanted  was  to  found  a  colony  beyond 
the  sea  without  drawing  on  the  public  treasury.  To  induce  mer- 
chants to  undertake  responsibilities  as  colonizers  which  could 
hardly  fail  to  be  detrimental  to  their  interests  as  fur  traders,  the 
Government  adopted  the  plan  of  constituting  monopolies  within 
certain  territorial  limits,  to  which  were  attached,  not  only  freedom 
from  duties  and  imposts  in  France,  but  high  and  important  powers 
of  control  and  administration  within  the  vast  domain  so  con- 
ceded. Noel's  monopoly,  to  which  we  have  referred,  prob- 
ably did  not  involve  colonizing  conditions,  and  was  speedily 
repealed.  Henry  HI.  was  induced,  however,  to  extend  wider 
privileges  to  the  Sieur  de  la  Roche  only  ten  years  later.  The 
terms  of  his  concession  indicate  already  the  pattern  on  which 
French  colonies  were  to  be  constituted,  and  although  his  enter- 
prise was  a  most  unhappy  failure,  still,  as  foreshadowing  the 
future  policy  of  France  in  the  New  World,  the  terms  of  the  deed 
are  worth  quoting.  The  document  commences  by  recounting 
Francis  I.'s  effort  to  found  a  colony  under  Roberval,  and  his 
(Henry's)  ambition  to  carry  out  his  ancestor's  project.  To  that 
end  he  confers  on  the  Sieur  de  la  Roche  like  powers,  and  consti- 
tutes him  Lieutenant-General  of  the  said  country  of  Canada, 
Hochelaga,  Newfoundland,  Labrador,  the  River  of  the  Great  Bay 
of  Norembegue,  and  the  land  adjacent  to  the  said  provinces  and 
rivers,  which  are  of  great  length  and  extent,  and  nevertheless 
uninhabited  by  the  subjects  of  Christian  princes.  Within  the 
limits  of  his  jurisdiction  de  la  Roche  is  given  authority  to  exercise 
ample  civil  and  religious  jurisdiction,  to  make  laws,  statutes  and 
ordinances,  enforce  obedience,  punish  or  pardon  delinquents, 
remit  penalties ;  it  being  always  understood  that  these  powers  are 


Bo  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

not  to  be  exercised  in  any  countries  under  control  of  any  other 
prince  or  potentate  who  is  a  friend,  ally  or  confederate  of  France. 
In  order  to  increase  the  good  will,  courage  and  loyalty  of  those 
who  shall  take  part  in  the  said  expedition,  and  likewise  of  those 
who  shall  remain  in  the  country,  there  is  conferred  on  him  the 
power  to  cede  portions  of  the  land  which  he  shall  have  acquired 
in  the  proposed  exploration,  with  full  rights  of  property  to  the  per- 
sons on  whom  they  shall  be  bestowed  and  to  their  successors, 
namely,  gentlemen  and  those  whom  he  shall  judge  to  be  persons 
of  merit ;  such  grants  to  be  in  the  form  oi  fiefs,  scigncnrics,  chdtet- 
lentes,  comtes,  vicomtes,  baronnies  and  other  dignities  in  fealty  to 
us,  as  he  may  judge  suitable  to  the  particular  services  of  each  \v. 
dividual,  on  condition  of  their  serving  in  the  defence  of  the  said 
countries.  On  others  of  meaner  condition  the  land  shall  be  con- 
ferred, subject  to  such  charge  and  annual  rent  as  he  shall  pre- 
scribe. "Nevertheless,"  the  commission  adds,  "our  intention  is  that 
they  shall  be  relieved  from  the  payment  of  dues  for  the  first  six 
years,  or  for  such  other  terms  as  our  lieutenant  shall  deem  right 
and  necessary ;  but  these  exemptions  are  in  no  case  to  include  free- 
dom from  military  service.  Also  on  the  return  of  our  said  lieute- 
nant he  may  distribute  to  others  who  have  taken  part  in  the  voyage 
the  gains  and  profits  accruing  from  said  enterprise,  giving  one 
third  to  those  who  make  the  voyage,  retaining  one  third  to  cover 
his  own  costs  and  expenses ;  the  other  third  to  be  applied  to  works 
for  the  common  advantage,  on  fortifications,  on  the  expenses  of 
war;  and  that  our  lieutenant  may  be  the  better  aided  in  the  said 
enterprise,  power  is  given  him  to  seek  the  assistance  of,  and  enlist 
in  the  army,  all  gentlemen,  merchants  and  others,  our  subjects,  in 
person  or  by  representative,  who  wish  to  take  part  in  the  said 
voyage,  to  pay  for  crews  or  equipments,  and  to  furnish  ships  at 
their  own  expense.  But  what  we  do  forbid  in  express  terms  is 
that  they  trade  without  the  knowledge  or  consent  of  our  said 
lieutenant,  under  penalty  of  forfeiture  of  their  goods  and  vessels  on 
discovery  of  their  crime."  The  commission  was  signed  by  Henry 
IV.  on  the  12th  of  January,  1598.  No  benefit  accrued  to  de  la 
Roche  or  any  of  his  associates  from  these  magnificent  concessions 
and  high-sounding  titles,  but  the  document  defines  the  lines  on 


DE   MONTS  RECMIVF.S  A  COMMISSION,  51 

which  Statesmen  had  already  determined  to  estabHsh  a  colonial 
system.  The  intention  of  the  Crown  was  to  relieve  itself  of  the 
risk  and  expense  of  colonization  by  offering  tempting  commercial 
terms  together  with  governmental  powers  to  the  adventurers,  and 
then  to  repeat  in  the  colonies  the  administrative  and  land  systems 
of  the  mother  country.  Not  the  remotest  suggestion  occurs  of  con- 
ferring even  a  shadowy  semblance  of  self-government  on  the  col- 
onies. Lescarbot  in  the  dedication  of  his  charming  "Histoire  de  la 
Nouvelle  France"  to  Louis  XIII.  in  1612,  refers  in  a  half-concealed 
vein  of  sarcasm  to  the  methods  pursued  by  France  when  he  says : 
"There  are  two  motives  which  ordinarily  induce  Kings  to  engage 
in  conquest — zeal  for  the  glory  of  God,  and  desire  for  the  increase 
of  their  own  glory  and  grandeur.  Our  kings,  your  predecessors, 
were  long  ago  induced,  under  this  double  stimulus,  to  extend  the 
bounds  of  their  realm,  and  to  create  at  little  cost  to  themselves, 
but  by  means  both  just  and  legitimate,  new  empires  to  be  hence- 
forth subject  to  them."  What  Lescarbot  describes  as  the  system 
practised  by  Francis  I.,  Henry  III.,  and  Henry  IV.,  was  continued 
by  Louis  XIII.  and  Louis  XIV. 

The  next  concession  is  that  made  by  Henry  IV.  to  Sieur 
de  Monts,  This  document  has  also  been  preserved  by  Lescarbot, 
who  sees  in  de  Monts'  plan  another  expedient  for  founding  a 
stable  colony  in  lands  beyond  the  sea,  without  drawing  on  His  Ma- 
jesty's coffers.  The  preamble,  as  usual,  recites  the  religious  motive 
which  actuates  the  King,  the  commercial  advantages  which  will 
accrue  from  taking  possession  of  La  Cadie,  and  trading  with  its 
people,  and  the  reasons  for  appointing  Sieur  de  Monts  the  King's 
lieutenant  over  the  territory  between  the  40th  and  46th  degrees 
North  Latitude,  Then  follows  a  recital  of  the  ample  powers  del- 
egated to  De  Monts  in  peace  and  in  war,  and  instructions  as  to  the 
cultivation  of  the  land  and  the  exploitation  of  the  mines,  from 
which  the  King  reserves  a  tithe  of  gold,  silver  and  copper.  He  is 
instructed  to  build  forts  at  once  and  garrison  them,  and  to  expel 
from  his  domain  all  vagrants  and  vagabonds,  and  to  perform  a 
multitude  of  acts  which  might  safely  have  been  left  to  the  future 
and  to  his  discretion  to  do  or  not  to  do.  The  original  concession 
signed  at  Fontainebleau  on  Nov.  8th,  1603,  seems,  however,  to  have 


82  QUEBEC    IX    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

omitted  the  most  important  provision,  namely,  the  consideration. 
This  is  embodied  in  a  supplementary  document,  signed  in  Paris 
by  Henry  IV.  on  the  i8th  of  December  of  the  same  year.  After 
reciting  the  tenor  of  the  previous  concession,  he  adds :  "To  facili- 
tate the  enterprise,  and  aid  those  who  are  associated  with  him,  and 
afford  them  some  mode  and  means  for  meeting  the  expense,  we 
have  thought  it  fit  to  concede  and  guarantee  to  them,  that  none  of 
our  subjects,  except  those  who  join  with  him  in  sharing  the  cost, 
will  be  permitted  to  trade  for  furs  or  other  merchandise  during 
a  period  of  ten  years,  in  the  lands,  harbors,  rivers  and  routes  of 
approach  throughout  the  extent  of  the  country  under  his  control. 
This  we  command."  Then  follows  the  authority  to  enforce  the 
exclusive  concession  granted  for  ten  years  for  the  trade  in  furs 
and  other  things  with  the  Indians  from  Cape  Race  to  the  40th 
degree  of  North  Latitude,  including  all  the  coast  of  Acadia,  Cape 
Breton,  the  Bay  of  St.  Clair  and  Chaleur,  the  Island  of  Perce, 
Gaspe,  Tadousac  and  both  banks  of  the  River  of  Canada,  and  all 
the  rivers  and  bays  on  either  side.  The  penalty  for  infringement 
of  the  concession  and  disobedience  to  the  edict,  is  confiscation  of 
vessels,  stores,  arms  and  cargo  for  the  benefit  of  de  ^lonts  and  his 
associates,  and  a  fine  of  30,000  livres ;  and  de  ]\Ionts  is  empowered 
to  seize  all  trespassers  and  their  property,  and  to  deliver  them  for 
trial  to  the  proper  authorities.  In  addition  to  these  trade  mon- 
opolies, Henry,  by  Patent  dated  the  8th  of  February,  1609,  grants 
de  Monts  exemption  from  certain  import  duties.  The  Patent  ex- 
plained that  certain  officers  have  obliged  de  Monts  and  his  as- 
sociates to  pay  the  same  import  dues  on  merchandise  when  coming 
from  New  France  as  are  levied  on  the  same  goods  imported 
from  Spain  and  other  foreign  countries,  and  have  even  levied  ad- 
ditional dues  on  de  ^Monts'  goods  when  passing  from  province  to 
province  in  France.  An  instance  is  quoted  of  twenty-two  bales 
of  beaver  skins  seized  for  duty  at  Coudre  sur  Narreau.  To  avoid 
in  future  such  impediment  to  de  Monts'  operations,  it  is  ordered 
that  merchandise  imported  from  Acadia.  Canada  and  other  locali- 
ties within  his  jurisdiction,  shall  not  pay  a  heavier  subsidy  than  the 
entr>'  dues,  and  those  payable  ordinarily  on  goods  passing  from 
one  province  to  another  in  France,  and  which  are  products  of  the 


ENGLISH   COLONIZATION.  83 

same,  and  the  decree  orders  the  restitution  of  the  twenty-two 
bales  that  had  been  seized. 

The  ill-starred  adventures  of  de  Monts  and  his  associates  in 
Acadia  and  on  the  coast  of  Maine  have  already  been  referred  to, 
and  we  have  mentioned  how  he  was  induced  by  Champlain  to 
turn  his  attention  to  the  Upper  St.  Lawrence,  as  a  better  field  for 
colonization  and  trade.  The  trading  privileges  were  cancelled 
at  the  instigation  of  the  merchants  of  St.  Malo  after  he  had  en- 
joyed them  for  three  years.  The  grounds  of  their  protest  were, 
that,  owing  to  de  Monts'  monopoly,  the  price  of  beaver  skins  had 
risen ;  that  the  freedom  of  trade  was  forbidden  in  regions  which 
had  been  open  to  the  merchants  of  northern  France  from  time  im- 
memorial ;  and,  as  a  crowning  argument,  that  de  Monts  had 
been  for  three  years  enjoying  trade  privileges,  and  had  made  no 
converts  to  Christianity.  One  would  not  suppose  a  suggestion 
of  this  nature  would  have  carried  much  weight,  coming  as  it  did 
from  money-making  merchants,  who  had  been  for  a  full  century 
in  contact  with  the  Indians  of  Labrador  and  Newfoundland,  with- 
out giving  thought  to,  or  spending  a  livre  on,  the  spiritual  ad- 
vancement of  the  natives.  But  any  argument  is  good  enough  to 
support  a  foregone  conclusion.  Nevertheless,  on  the  representa- 
tion to  the  King  by  Lescarbot  and  others  of  de  Monts'  friends,  of 
all  that  the  latter  had  done.  His  Majesty  in  1607  renewed  the 
privileges  of  exclusive  traffic  in  beaver  skins  for  one  year.  Les- 
carbot may  well  say  "this  was  surely  but  a  weak  foundation  on 
which  to  build  a  great  project,  and  little  time  was  allowed."  A 
great  project  it  proved  to  be,  for,  as  we  have  seen,  Quebec  was 
founded  within  the  year. 

Though  France  took  the  lead  as  a  North  American  colonizer, 
England  followed  close  on  her  track.  She  created  in  1606  two 
companies  whose  representatives  and  successors  were  to  exercise 
an  incalculable  influence  over  the  destinies  of  mankind, — the  South 
Virginia,  or  London  Company,  and  the  Company  of  Plymouth 
Adventurers.  Neither  was  the  actual  corporation  under  which 
the  Northern  and  Southern  English  colonies  subsequently 
held  title,  nor  were  they  really  the  first  corporate  bodies  which 
tried,  under  English  auspices,  the  experiment  of  combining  trade 


84  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

jind  colonization  on  the  East  coast  of  North  America.  They  were 
the  offspring  of  the  heroic  but  futile  eft'orts  made  by  Raleigh  and 
his  lieutenant  in  the  previous  century,  to  found  a  colony  in  Vir- 
ginia. The  provisions  of  the  Charter  granted  Sir  Walter  in  1583- 
1584,  expressed  conclusively  the  spirit  which  even  then  guided 
England  in  her  colonization  schemes.  The  Charter  grants  to  the 
colonists  "all  the  privileges  of  free  denizens  and  persons  native 
of  England,  in  such  ample  manner  as  if  they  were  born  and  per- 
sonally resident  in  our  said  Realm  of  England."  And  they  were 
to  be  governed  according  to  such  statutes  as  shall  be  by  him  or 
them  established,  provided  they  do  not  contradict  the  law  of  the 
Realm.  The  same  principles  and  powers  underlie  the  constitu- 
tions of  all  the  subsequent  colonies.  The  contrast  between  these 
simple  and  liberal  charters  and  the  concessions,  edicts,  and  ordi- 
nances, imder  which  the  neighboring  French  colony  was  governed, 
accounts  for  the  opposite  course  followed  by  the  respective  nations 
from  their  Inrth  until  to-day. 

The  colonization  of  both  Virginia  and  Massachusetts  was  un- 
dertaken by  trading  companies,  but  the  policy  of  these  companies, 
however  mistaken  in  many  respects,  was  widely  different  from 
the  purely  selfish  objects  of  the  French  companies.  Moreover, 
they  w'ere  popular  in  every  sense,  for  the  reorganized  London 
Company  enrolled  as  its  shareholders  659  individuals  and  56 
trade  guilds. 

Holland  did  not  escape  the  epidemic  of  colonial  expansion,  but 
her  only  attempt  to  gain  a  footing  on  the  North  American  conti- 
nent was  fated  to  have  very  slight  results,  for  it  is  difficult 
to  trace  the  impression  made  by  the  Dutch,  except  in  the 
nomenclature  of  localities.  It  was  in  1609  that  the  United  Neth- 
erland  Company  landed  a  shipload  of  Walloons,  and  founded  a 
port  and  factory  at  the  mouth  of  the  Hudson.  England  had 
claimed  the  territory  by  right  of  discovery,  and  had  ceded  it  to  one 
of  the  two  companies  which  she  had  chartered  three  years  pre- 
viously. But  the  Dutchmen  remained  on  the  Hudson  and  the 
Mohawk  until  1664. 

In  their  dealing  with  the  Iroquois,  whose  hankering  for  fire- 
arms they  were  only  too  willing  to  gratify,  the  Dutch  settlers 


THE  DUTCH  COLONIES.  85 

troubled  their  neighbors  of  New  France  and  France's  Indian  allies 
not  a  little;  while  the  trade  and  land  regulations  of  New  Nether- 
land  were  almost  as  illiberal  as  those  of  France.  Holland  cannot 
be  said,  therefore,  to  have  created  an  independent  phase  of  North 
American  colonization,  or  to  have  left  the  impress  of  her  institu- 
tions on  the  rising  communities  of  the  Continent. 


CHAPTER  V. 

Quebec  as  a  Trading  Post  Under  de  Monts^  Company 
and  Under  Free  Trade. 

Champlain  showed  keen  insight  when  he  selected  as  the  seat  of 
empire  the  cHffs  overhanging  the  narrow  stretch  of  the  mighty 
river,  the  most  defensible  site  from  a  military  point  of  view,  and 
the  best  fitted  by  nature  both  as  a  port  and  as  a  center  of  trade. 
In  a  few  sentences  Champlain  tells  how  they  spent  the  first  sum- 
mer at  Quebec.  "The  Island  of  Orleans  is  distant  from  Quebec 
but  a  league.  On  arrival  I  went  in  search  of  a  spot  for  our  house. 
I  could  find  none  more  suitable  or  better  situated  than  the  part 
of  the  Promontory  of  Quebec,  so  called  by  the  Indians.  A  forest 
of  birch  trees  and  vines  covered  it.  At  once,  therefore,  I  set  some 
men  to  felling  the  trees,  others  to  sawing  planks,  others  to  ex- 
cavating for  the  cellar  and  digging  a  trench,  and  part  I  sent  back 
to  Tadousac  for  those  of  our  comrades  who  had  been  left  behind 
and  for  the  stores.  My  first  care  was  to  build  a  house  wnthin 
which  to  store  our  provisions.  This  was  promptly  and  compe- 
tently done  through  the  activity  of  my  men,  and  under  my  own 
supervision.  Near  by  is  the  St.  Croix  River  where  of  yore  Car- 
tier  spent  a  winter.  \\"hile  carpenters  toiled,  and  other  mechan- 
ics were  at  work  on  the  house,  the  others  were  busy  making  a 
clearance  about  our  future  abode ;  for  as  the  land  seemed  fertile. 
I  was  anxious  to  plant  a  garden  and  determine  whether  wheat 
and  other  cereals  could  not  be  grown  to  advantage."  Champlain. 
in  his  edition  of  1613,  gives  both  a  picture  of  the  habitation  and 
a  map  of  the  harbor.  He  seems  to  place  his  residence  on  the  ex- 
treme point  of  the  jutting  promontory,  between  the  St.  Lawrence 
and  the  St.  Charles,  and  therefore  on  the  beach  where  St.  Peter 
and  St.  Paul  streets  now  meet.  The  beach  was  narrow  and  the 
clififs  rose  sheer  above  it.  There  is  not  at  present,  nor  can  there 
have  been  then,  any  ledge  above  the  high  tide  level  on  which  to 


n 


'I  HE  FOUNDING  OF  A  CITY.  8/ 

erect  a  dwelling,  safe  from  the  ice,  which  must  have  piled  up 
high  against  the  cliff  during  the  winter.  The  site  generally 
assigned  to  the  habitation,  namely,  between  the  old  cul  dc  sac 
and  the  foot  of  the  ravine  (now  Mountain  street)  leading  to  the 
summit  of  the  cliff,  or  about  where  the  Church  of  Notre  Dame  des 
Victoires  stands,  is,  therefore,  the  more  probable  location.  When 
Champlain  is  arguing  for  the  St.  Charles,"  which  he  calls  La  Petite 
Riviere,  as  we  still  call  it,  as  being  the  scene  of  Cartier's  first  win- 
ter quarters,  he  mentions  that  the  shallows  of  that  stream  are  1,500 
feet  from  his  habitation,  which  he  says  is  further  up  the  river, 
meaning  doubtless  the  St.  Lawrence.  This  would  confirm  the 
traditional  site  of  the  habitation.  Champlain  designates  a  point 
B.  as  that  where  they  cleared  away  the  forest  to  plant  corn.  It 
is  the  level  ground  occupied  by  the  ITrsuline  Convent  and  Garden, 
which  was,  we  may  suppose,  selected  on  account  of  its  good 
soil  by  both  the  explorers,  and  approved  of  for  the  same  reason  by 
the  good  Sisterhood.  Another  point,  G.,  would  seem  to  indicate 
the  place  where  they  cut  grass  for  their  animals,  and  where,  prob- 
ably, there  were  natural  meadows  or  some  old  clearings.  It  is 
on  the  slope  of  the  second  hill  from  the  Garden,  G.,  and  therefore 
where  the  glacis  of  the  citadel  has  now  been  graded.  The  old 
Iroquois  town  of  Stadacona  perhaps  stood  there,  and  only  brush- 
wood had  grown  up  over  the  open  space  occupied  by  the  lodges 
and  cultivated  fields  of  Donnacona's  tribe. 

Hardly  had  the  work  of  building  commenced  when  their  black- 
smith, one  Jean  Duval,  began  to  hatch  a  scheme  to  kill  Champlain, 
seize  the  property,  and  turn  it  over  on  behalf  of  Spain  to  the 
Basque  or  Spanish  fishermen  at  Tadousac,  or  more  probably  to 
use  it  for  piratical  purposes.  Duval  enlisted  four  of  his  com- 
panions in  the  conspiracy,  but  they  hesitated  so  long  as  to  the 
best  manner  of  dispatching  Champlain  that  one  of  the  ships  ar- 
rived from  Tadousac,  and  a  conspirator,  Antoine  Natel,  confided 
the  whole  plot  to  the  Captain.  At  Champlain's  suggestion  the 
conspirators  were  induced  to  go  on  board  the  ship  to  a  convivial 
gathering,  and  were  then  arrested.  As  there  was  no  prison  in 
Quebec,  and  as  their  presence  there  would  interfere  with  the 
progress  of  the  liabifatio)t,  he  took  them  to  Tadousac  and  handed 


88  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

them  over  to  the  charge  of  Pontgrave,  he  himself  returning  at 
once  to  Quebec.  Pontgrave  followed  with  the  prisoners,  Cham- 
plain  having  wisely  concluded  that  the  trial  and  execution  should 
take  place  at  the  scene  of  the  conspiracy  itself.  For  the  trial  of 
the  captives  he  created  a  tribunal,  consisting  of  himself,  Pont- 
grave, the  doctor,  the  captain,  the  mate  and  some  of  the  sailors. 
The  verdict  was  death.  The  sentence  was  carried  out  in  the  case 
of  Duval,  who  was  hanged  and  whose  head  was  afterwards  ex- 
posed on  the  highest  pinnacle  of  the  habitation  as  a  warning.  The 
carrying  out  of  the  sentence  was  suspended  in  the  case  of  the 
accomplices,  who  were  sent  to  France  to  be  dealt  with  by  de 
Monts,  or  as  the  law  might  dictate.  It  was  a  sad  introduction  to 
Champlain's  administration,  and  may  have  awakened  in  him 
gloomy  forebodings ;  but  happily  the  subsequent  story  of  his  rule, 
and  the  whole  history  of  the  City,  have  not  justified  the  misgiving 
which  may  have  oppressed  him ;  for  the  PVench  population  of 
Quebec  may  well  be  proud  of  its  comparative  freedom  from  crime. 
On  Sept.  1 8th  Pontgrave  sailed  for  France  with  three  prisoners 
— of  the  five  Duval  had  been  hanged ;  the  informer,  it  may  be 
assumed,  was  pardoned.  The  residence  had  not  yet  been  completed, 
and  cold  weather  was  approaching,  so  there  must  have  been  in- 
tense activity,  not  only  in  building  but  in  laying  in  stores  against 
the  winter.  There  were  Indians  camped  near  by,  probably  around 
the  point  on  the  St.  Charles  Basin,  engaged  in  catching  eels,  be- 
tween the  middle  of  September  and  the  middle  of  October. 
Cartier  says  that  smoked  eel  was  their  principal  food  till  Febru- 
ary, when  they  started  on  their  moose  hunting  expeditions;  who- 
ever, therefore,  the  Indians  were  that  succeeded  Donnacona's 
tribe,  they  looked  to  the  same  source  of  supply. 

Champlain  describes  the  habitation,  and  depicts  it  in  his  rough 
drawing,  as  consisting  of  three  separate  houses,  joined  together. 
Each  was  three  toises  (iS  feet)  long  by  two  and  a  half  (15  feet) 
wide.  In  the  courtyard  was  erected  a  store  house,  and  over  it  a 
watch  tower,  which  he  st^^led  a  colotnUcre;  a  gallery  on  a  level 
with  the  roof  of  the  store  house  surrounded  the  three  houses,  and 
gave  access  to  their  second  stories.  On  an  esplanade  in  front  of 
one  or  both  sides,  were  mounted  five  cannon,  and  further  protec- 


Champlain's  First  Battle  wiili  tlie  Irucjucis. 
Champlain,  Edition  of  1613. 


ABITATrON  DE 
QVEBECa 


A  Lc  magjzin.  ,  logcmrns. 

B  Colombicr  !     I,   L„(,,,    J„    ,-,™r    d,.    Ch; 

L.  Corps  dc  logis  on  font  n.>s  pUin. 

armcs,  &    pour   k.ger    Ics  .     ]   I,a  pnrtc  <lr  I'lialiilarion, 

ouuners.  I  ,]  y  .  poiil-lcui'i, 

D  Aulrc  corps   dc    logii   pour         L  Hro.nenoif  auiour  dc  I'h 

ECidran""""' 

fXVrZ'^tf'!'^'',""''^  I     ..   l-'*';,'"'^'-  I     l<   La  gr.nsic  riauic  dc  lima 


X   Plalf;  formrs  ^''^  1"-..'"  dc 
tenjillcs  paur  niL-itic  Ic  ca- 

O   lardin    du   ficur    dc    Cham- 
plain. 

P   La  cuifinc, 

la.ion  romcnant  |...    p,c>K         O   p|,cc  Jcuam  rhabi,a-,io„  fur 
dc  large  luf^ucs  fur  Ic  ln.it  Ic  Iwrt  dc  la  riulcre. 


Champlain's  Habitation.     Champlain,  Edition  of  1613. 


A  DISTRESSING  WINTER.  89 

tion  was  afforded  by  the  palisade  and  a  ditch  sixteen  feet  wide  and 
six  feet  deep.  Champlain's  habitation  was  dear  to  him,  and  he  con- 
tinued to  add  to  it ;  for  when  Father  Sagard  arrived  in  Canada  on 
the  eve  of  the  Feast  of  Saint  Peter  and  Saint  Paul  in  1623,  he 
found  it  to  be  a  "really  fine  house,  surrounded  by  a  strong  wall, 
surmounted,  landward,  by  two  small  towers  built  as  a  precau- 
tion ;"  but  he  adds  that,  "despite  these  precautions  for  safety,  it 
would  not  be  difficult  to  take  the  place  by  storm,  even  without  the 
aid  of  artillery." 

Lescarbot  tells  us  that  twenty-eight  men  remained  to  winter  at 
Quebec.  Champlain  did  not  let  this  first  season  pass  without  com- 
mencing his  agricultural  experiments,  for  on  the  first  of  October 
he  sowed  wheat,  and  on  the  15th,  rye,  and  on  the  24th  planted 
some  grape  vines.  Beyond  this  advertisement  of  his  desire  to 
test  the  farming  capabilities  of  the  country,  he  records  only  the 
principal  meteorological  events  of  the  season.  On  the  13th 
of  October  there  was  a  white  frost,  and  the  leaves  were 
falling  on  the  15th.  On  November  i8th  snow  fell  in  quanti- 
ty, but  it  thawed  in  a  couple  of  days.  A  furious  snowstorm 
set  in  on  February  5th,  which  lasted  for  forty-eight  hours. 
In  February  the  locksmith  died  of  dysentery,  brought  on,  as 
Champlain  thought,  by  eating  too  freely  of  smoked  eels.  Les- 
carbot tells  a  doleful  tale  of  the  suffering  of  the  residents. 
According  to  him  they  could  not  find  Cartier's  remedy,  the  an- 
nedda.  We  can  only  suppose  that  they  could  not  identify  it 
themselves,  and  that  the  native  race  who  were  in  occupation 
in  Cartier's  time  having  disappeared,  there  was  no  one  to 
point  it  out  to  them.  With  no  provision  made  against  scurvy,  and 
no  amusement  to  drive  away  homesickness,  the  plight  of  the  little 
band  was  hardly  less  pitiable  than  that  of  Cartier's  crew  on  the 
neighboring  St.  Charles  in  the  previous  century.  What  they  lacked 
was  fresh  meat  and  vegetables,  for  they  had  bread  enough  to  dole 
out  even  in  charity  to  a  family  of  starving  Micmacs,  who,  rather 
than  die  of  hunger,  risked  crossing  from  the  south  shore  on  the 
floating  ice.  The  poor  wretches,  to  the  horror  of  the  French,  were 
driven  to  sustain  life  by  eating  the  decayed  carrion  with  which  the 
fox  traps  were  baited. 


90  QUEBEC    IX    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

And  so  the  winter  wore  away.  Spring  was  early,  for  the 
snow  had  meUed  by  the  8th  of  April ;  but  the  cold  continued,  and 
the  trees  did  not  bud  until  well  on  in  May.  With  the  advent  of 
Spring  and  vegetation,  and  presumably  fresh  fish,  scurvy,  which 
Chaniplain  supposed  to  be  a  inaladie  de  la  tcrrc,  disappeared.  So 
utterly  ignorant  was  he  of  the  aetiology  of  the  disease,  that,  in 
quoting  the  instance  of  an  Indian  who  died  of  it  from  eating  salt 
meat,  he  concludes  that  salt  meat  is  not  a  remedy.  On  second 
thought  he  wonders  whether  it  is  not  perhaps  the  cause.  He  may 
have  acted  on  this  hypothesis,  as  during  the  following  three  win- 
ters the  health  of  his  post  seems  to  have  been  excellent.  On  the 
5th  of  June,  1609,  when  the  Sieur  des  Alarais,  son-in-law  of  Pont- 
grave,  arrived  from  France,  he  found  only  eight  haggard  represen- 
tatives of  the  twenty-eight  hearty  men  whom  Pontgrave  had  left 
to  face  the  rigor  of  the  winter,  and  of  these  eight,  Champlain  says, 
one-half  were  ill.  Des  Marais  had  parted  from  his  father-in-law 
at  Tadousac,  whither  Champlain  at  once  went.  After  consultation, 
it  was  decided  that  Champlain  should  fulfill  the  promise  made  the 
summer  previous,  to  accompany  the  Montagnais  and  the  Hu- 
rons  on  a  warlike  expedition  against  the  Iroquois.  He  there- 
fore lost  no  time  in  returning  to  Quebec,  equipping  a  chaloupe, 
and  starting  up  the  river.  At  a  league  and  a  half  above  the  river 
of  Sainte  Anne  de  la  Perade,  he  met  between  two  and  three  hun- 
dred Indians,  Algonquins  and  Hurons,  coming  to  claim  the  ex- 
ecution of  his  pledge.  Then  followed  a  long  pow  wow,  and  a 
return  to  Quebec  with  his  Indian  allies  in  his  trail,  where  for 
three  days  there  was  dancing  and  feasting,  with  renewed  promises 
of  fidelity  and  of  aid  on  both  sides. 

What  happened  in  this  raid  against  the  Iroquois  afifected 
most  intimately  and  most  momentously  the  fortunes  of  Quebec, 
for  it  determined  the  attitude  of  the  French  as  friends  of  one 
section  of  the  Indian  population  of  the  continent,  and  as  enemies 
of  another,  and  that  the  most  powerful  of  all.  It  is  not  unlikely 
that  it  also  embittered  the  relations  of  the  Indian  to  the  Euro- 
pean over  the  whole  North  American  continent,  for  there  had  been 
previously  little  animosity  between  the  Indians  and  the  French  in 
Acadia.    It  made  what  might  have  been  the  peaceful  trading  post 


A  FATEFUL  CAMPAIGN.  9I 

of  Quebec  a  center  of  almost  constant  hostile  preparation,  and 
converted  the  future  Province  into  a  military  colony,  where  mili- 
tary considerations  were  always  uppermost,  and  the  pursuit  of 
trade  and  commerce  was  held  in  smaller  esteem  than  the 
profession  of  arms.  A  further  effect  was  to  aggravate  the 
inimical  feeling  between  the  French  colonists  and  the  English, 
converting  mere  dislike,  arising  out  of  commercial  rivalries,  into 
hatred  and  suspicion.  Champlain's  active  alliance  with  the  ene- 
mies of  the  Iroquois,  both  of  the  Algonquin  and  the  Huron  stock, 
and  the  inauguration  of  his  governorship  by  an  act  of  war,  gave 
direction  to  the  whole  policy  of  France  in  the  New  World.  What 
his  motive  was  has  been  a  subject  of  endless  speculation.  Perhaps 
he  acted  merely  from  impulse,  not  from  policy.  Every  Spanish 
explorer  had  been  a  conqueror.  Champlain  had  served  his  ap- 
prenticeship under  Spanish  and  Portuguese  leaders.  He  was  a 
Frenchman  in  an  age  when  France  was  always  at  war,  and  when 
war  was  regarded  as  the  only  calling  becoming  a  gentleman.  If  he 
had  a  policy,  it  was  dictated  by  considerations  of  trade.  He  had  ad- 
vised de  Monts  and  Madame  de  Guercheville  to  devote  their  ener- 
gies and  funds  to  the  development  of  the  interior  of  the  Continent, 
where  they  might  expect  to  be  beyond  the  reach  of  English  inter- 
ference and  encroachment.  He  had  done  this  when  the  James- 
town settlement  was  in  its  infancy,  and,  under  Ralph  Lane, 
threatened  with  the  untimely  fate  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh's  Roan- 
oke Company,  and  before  Argall  had  so  ruthlessly  harried  the 
French  posts  on  the  coast  of  Maine  and  Nova  Scotia.  But  he 
appreciated  the  indomitable  and  pushing  character  of  the  Eng- 
lish, and  may  have  apprehended  that  they  would  sooner  or  later  be 
the  dominant  power  on  the  Atlantic  seaboard.  If  so,  some  line  of 
demarcation  would  necessarily  have  to  be  drawn,  and  a  sphere  of 
influence,  if  not  of  possession,  prescribed  within  which  the  mer- 
chants of  the  rival  nations  might  trade.  Such  a  line  would 
naturally  be  the  Upper  St.  Lawrence  and  the  Lakes,  whose  exist- 
ence he  knew  of,  though  he  dreamed  not  of  their  extent.  He  was 
the  agent  of  a  trading  company,  and  the  commercial  interests  of 
his  company  were  rightly  his  first  concern.  If  he  enlisted  on 
the  side  of  the  company  a  powerful  tribe  to  the  north  of  the 


92  QL'EBEC    IX    THE    SEVEXTEEXTII    CEXTURV. 

Lakes,  and  also  the  enemies  of  the  Iroquois  in  the  interior  of  the 
Acadian  Peninsula,  he  would  monopolize  the  furs  of  his  allies  and 
secure  the  trade  of  the  vast  interior,  the  illimitable  extent  of  which, 
as  described  by  the  natives,  must  have  set  his  imagination  aglow. 
Should  the  English  occupy  the  coast,  let  them  ally  themselves,  if 
they  would,  with  the  Five  Nations,  and  get  what  profit  they  could 
out  of  the  fringe  of  territory  between  the  Atlantic  and  the  Lakes. 
He  and  his  company,  controlling  the  trade  of  the  interior,  would 
not  begrudge  it  to  them.  He  may  not  have  formulated  the 
forecast  in  so  many  words,  but  dreams  of  empire  haunt  the 
waking  and  sleeping  thoughts  of  empire  builders,  and  prescience 
akin  to  inspiration  directs  their  plans.  Moreover,  the  less  pre- 
cise the  geographical  knowledge  of  such  a  pioneer  as  Champlain, 
and  the  slighter  his  acquaintance  with  the  limits  of  trade,  the 
wider  the  scope  for  the  play  of  his  imagination. 

Whatever  his  motives  may  have  been,  the  war  on  which  he 
so  lightly  entered  was  still  in  progress  when  France — a  cen- 
tury and  a  half  later — retired  from  the  Great  River  and  the 
Lakes.  The  details  of  this  interminable  struggle,  with  all  its 
picturesque  but  horrible  interest,  it  will  not  be  our  province  to  de- 
scribe ;  but  as  Quebec  was  the  base  of  French  warlike  operations, 
we  shall  again  and  again  see  the  motley  host  clustered  there  for 
the  fray.  To  fight  the  first  battle  there  went  some  three  hundred 
savages  in  their  canoes,  and  Champlain,  Pontgrave's  son-in-law, 
Des  Marais,  Laroutte,  the  pilot,  and  nine  men,  in  one  of  the 
shallops.  Pontgrave  accompanied  them  as  far  as  the  River  of  St. 
Croix.  A  number  of  the  Indians  deserted  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Richelieu.  Champlain  was  obliged  to  send  back  all  but  two  volun- 
teers with  the  shallop,  from  the  foot  of  the  Chambly  Rapids,  so 
that  when  they  all  embarked  in  twent}'-four  canoes  above  the 
Rapids,  there  were  with  the  three  Frenchmen  only  fifty-six  In- 
dians. They  met  a  band  of  the  enemy  on  the  warpath  on  the 
shores  of  Lake  Champlain,  which  appropriately  derives  its  name 
from  its  discoverer.  The  Iroquois  fled  before  the  deadly  fire  of 
the  three  Spanish  arquebuses,  loaded  with  four  balls  to  a  charge. 
It  was  their  first  experience  of  fire-arms.  Yet  before  they 
themselves  had  acquired  them,  and  learned  their  use,  they  had  dis- 


^  i.  SL   i(L 


A  l>  litu  oil  I'hibiuiion  c(t  r.iil 
B  Terrc   Jcffiichtc    o-    I  ■  • 

K    Rlu.c.c    's,'^",  ■  k 


Sn'i  U  rl6(urc  dc  I-Huid.Din 
prfru^raesl  Ic  liru  au  hivcrnt 

i<  (.V«^/,  qui  I  ■    • 


Map  of  the  Environs  of  Quebec.    From  Champlain,  Edition  of  i6iy. 


INDIAN    BARBARITIES.  93 

covered  that  numbers  could  successfully  face  even  powder  and 
shot.  But  on  this  the  first  encounter,  the  terror  of  these  strange 
beings  and  their  mysterious,  murderous  weapons,  quenched  the 
courage  of  these  the  bravest  of  the  Indian  braves.  In  the  sug- 
gestive drawings  with  which  Champlain  illustrates  his  narrative, 
he  always  depicts  his  men  in  full  panoply  of  war,  with  helmet  and 
steel  cuirass,  he  himself  being  distinguished  by  the  plume  in  his 
hat.  In  reality  they  probably  did  wear  armor  of  some  kind.  On  the 
evening  of  the  victory  Champlain  witnessed  for  the  first  time  one 
of  the  peculiar  horrors  of  Indian  warfare — the  torture  of  a  pris- 
oner; and,  being  a  chivalrous  man,  the  terrible  spectacle  nuist 
have  made  him  reilect  on  the  incongruity  of  fighting  side  by  side 
with  such  allies — whether  aiding  them  in  their  quarrels,  or  re- 
ceiving their  aid  in  his.  Barbarous  as  war  is  at  the  best,  its  bru- 
tality was  displayed  in  all  its  most  revolting  features  in  Indian 
hostilities ;  and  though  Champlain  probably  did  not  fully  realize 
the  crime  he  was  committing  in  setting  the  example  of  enlisting 
savages  as  his  allies  in  war,  the  abominable  spectacle  must  have . 
excited  in  his  mind  a  serious  feeling  of  disquietude.  As  a 
consequence  of  his  action  the  Iroquois  sought  the  friendship 
of  the  Dutch  and  the  English,  and  became  their  allies.  But,  apart 
from  the  direct  results  of  such  iniquitous  coalitions,  the  fact  that 
the  white  man  was  willing  to  embroil  himself  in  their  quarrels 
and  use  his  weapons  at  their  dictation,  on  one  side  or  the  other, 
must  have  done  more  to  make  them  objects  of  suspicion  and  dread 
than  their  aggressiveness  as  traders  and  colonists. 

It  was  not  until  1622  that  the  first  terrible  massacre  of  the  In- 
dians was  perpetrated  in  Virginia  and  it  was  fifteen  years  later 
before  the  Pequod  war  broke  out  in  New  England.  It  would  be 
unfair  to  trace  back  either  calamity  to  Champlain's  alliance  with 
the  Hurons,  Algonquins,  and  Montagnais ;  but  had  he  held  aloof 
from  all  participation  in  aboriginal  politics  and  quarrels,  and  ex- 
ercised toward  all  alike  that  forbearance,  tact  and  sympathy 
with  Indian  habits  and  tastes  which  made  the  French  so  much 
more  successful  and  humane  in  their  treatment  of  the  aborigines 
than  the  Anglo-Saxon,  there  would  not  have  been  any  direct  in- 
centive towards  the  alliance  of  the  Iroquois  and  the  English.     On 


94  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

the  contrary,  the  example  of  the  French  would  have  been  con- 
ducive to  friendly  relations  between  Europeans  and  the  whole 
native  population  of  the  American  continent. 

On  the  return  from  Lake  Champlain  the  Hurons  and  Algon- 
quins  left  the  army  at  the  Chambly  Rapids,  after  making  the  most 
profound  protestations  of  friendship,  and  begging  Champlain  to 
visit  their  land  and  treat  them  as  brothers,  which  he  promised  to 
do.  The  iMontagnais,  who  stayed  at  Quebec  only  long  enough  to 
regale  themselves  on  bread  and  peas,  persuaded  Champlain  to 
give  them  patenotres  (chaplets)  with  which  to  adorn  the  decapi- 
tated heads  of  their  enemies.  With  these  mounted  on  poles,  and 
decorating  the  bows  of  their  canoes,  they  approached  Tadousac. 
As  an  acknowledgment  of  their  indebtedness,  and  a  pledge  of 
friendship,  they  graciously  sent  him  the  head  and  arms  of  one  of 
their  unfortunate  foes.  These  Champlain  presented  to  the  King 
— a  more  appropriate  offering  than  either  the  donor  or  the  receiver 
was  aware  of,  considering  the  later  consequences  of  the  sum- 
mer's work.  The  gift,  however,  did  not  shock  the  King,  who 
accepted  it  as  an  emblem  of  the  habits  of  his  new  subjects. 

After  Champlain's  return  to  Quebec  a  large  band  of  Algon- 
quins  moved  down  the  river,  expressing  themselves  as  full 
of  regret  that  they  had  been  too  late  to  take  part  in  the  discom- 
fiture of  their  enemies,  and  presenting  in  token  of  their  gratitude 
a  more  acceptable  present  than  heads  and  arms — a  gift  of  furs. 
Shortly  afterward  Champlain  proceeded  to  the  post  at  Ta- 
dousac, where,  after  Pontgrave  had  joined  him,  they  both 
decided  to  return  to  France.  They  must  have  been  anxious  to 
know  whether  Henry  lA'.  had  been  induced,  in  spite  of  the  pro- 
test of  the  Alalouins,  to  renew  de  ]\Ionts'  trading  privileges.  They 
decided  to  put  the  Quebec  post  in  charge  of  Captain  Pierre  Chavin 
of  Rouen,  and  to  leave  with  him  fifteen  men,  all  provision  having 
been  made  for  their  welfare,  and  the  store  stocked  with  more 
suitable  food  than  on  previous  occasions.  Owing  doubtless  to 
this  circumstance,  the  health  of  the  sixteen  was  unimpaired  in 
the  following  spring.  Champlain  and  Pontgrave  took  a  boat  to 
Tadousac  on  the  first  of  September  and  set  sail  thence  for  France. 
Not  a  word  is  said  in  either  of  Champlain's  narratives  as  to  the 


BUSINESS  PERPLEXITIES.  95 

financial  results  of  the  year's  work,  secrecy  then,  as  now,  being 
one  of  the  maxims  of  trade.  On  their  arrival,  both  went  to  the 
Company's  headquarters  at  Rouen  to  consult  de  Monts'  partners, 
Collier  and  Gendre,  before  reporting  to  de  Monts  himself.  Then 
Champlain,  at  an  audience  with  the  King,  described  his  adven- 
tures and  presented  his  Majesty  with  a  girdle  embroidered  with 
porcupine  quills.  They  determined  to  maintain  their  Quebec 
establishment,  and  to  continue  the  exploitation  of  the  Great 
River  under  the  guidance  of  Champlain  in  alliance  with  the 
Hurons.  It  was  therefore  decided  to  send  Pontgrave  to  Tadou- 
sac,  and  he  was  commissioned  to  lay  in  a  cargo  consisting  in  part 
of  merchandise  for  barter  and  in  part  of  provisions.  In  return  for 
undertaking  and  preparing  to  explore  the  Great  River  and  open 
channels  of  trade  never  before  tapped,  de  Monts  claimed  a  new 
concession,  his  old  having  expired  a  twelvemonth  ago ;  but  the 
petition  was  rejected.  Though  the  refusal  to  renew  de  Monts' 
privileges  may  have  been  forced  on  Henry  by  the  necessity  for 
propitiating  the  merchants  of  Normandy  and  Brittany,  and 
though  it  must  have  jarred  on  his  good  nature  to  deny  a  request 
to  one  so  conspicuous  for  public  spirit  and  public  services,  he  did 
not,  in  so  doing,  contradict  his  principles.  There  are  traceable  in 
Henry's  schemes  the  germs  of  a  freer  trade  policy  than  has  even 
yet  found  acceptance  in  France.  To  close  the  St.  Lawrence  to 
all  the  world  save  a  company  of  greedy  traders  would  naturally 
be  repugnant  to  the  mind  of  the  monarch  who  agreed  to  Article 
IV.  of  the  Treaty  with  Sultan  Achmet  I.,  "that  all  the  nations  of 
Europe,  the  English  included,  should  trade  freely  in  the  Levant 
under  the  flag  and  the  protection  of  France,  and  under  the  direc- 
tion of  the  counsel  of  France." 

But  although  de  Monts'  petition  was  refused,  he  and  his  as- 
sociates bravely  determined  to  carry  out  their  plans,  and  Cham- 
plain and  Pontgrave  sailed  away  from  Honfleur.  During  his  win- 
ter in  France  Champlain  seems  again  to  have  endeavored  to  in- 
duce Madame  de  Guercheville  to  enlist  in  his  schemes,  but  with 
no  better  success  than  formerly.  His  ships  carried  provisions 
sufficient  to  maintain  the  little  colony  for  another  winter,  ar- 
tisans to  extend  it,  and  merchandise   for  trafific.      But  contrary 


9G  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

winds  having  driven  him  into  an  EngHsh  port,  he  returned  to 
France,  and  it  was  the  8th  of  April  before  he  finally  set  sail  for 
the  Colony.  He  made  a  short  voyage,  and  arrived  in  Tadousac 
on  the  27th  of  April,  but,  quick  as  he  had  been,  the  unchartered 
traders  had  already  preceded  him.  Here  he  found  the  Montag- 
nais  Indians  eager  for  traffic,  but  still  more  eager  to  enlist  him  in 
their  wars ;  and  he  made  a  one-sided  promise  to  accompany  them 
in  the  following  year  on  an  expedition  to  a  great  sea  whose  further 
shore  you  could  not  sec — evidently,  either  the  Hudson  Bay,  or 
Lake  Mistassini.  But  Champlain's  immediate  object  was  to  ac- 
company the  Hurons  to  their  home  on  the  Georgian  Bay  and  fight 
with  them  against  the  Iroquois.  As  he  says,  "he  rejoiced  at 
having  two  strings  to  his  bow,  for  if  one  snapped,  he  could  play 
upon  the  other." 

The  young  Sieur  Pierre  du  Pare  had  come  down  from  Quebec 
and  relieved  his  anxiety  as  to  the  welfare  of  his  comrades.  The 
winter  had  been  mild  and  short.  They  seldom  lacked  fresh  meat, 
and  thotigh  there  had  been  some  sickness,  all  were  well  again.  He 
had  learned,  as  he  says,  that  with  health  and  fresh  food,  life  could 
be  preserved  as  well  in  Canada  as  in  France  during  the  long  win- 
ter months.  He  left  Tadousac  after  only  a  two  days'  rest,  and 
reaching  Quebec  found  his  little  colony  of  fifteen  luider  Pierre 
Chavin  all  alive  and  in  good  health,  as  reported.  A  chief  called 
Batiscan  with  his  band  of  savages  was  there  ready  to  welcome  him 
with  songs  and  dances.  They  were  speedily  joined  by  sixty  Mon- 
tagnais,  willing  to  aid  him  if  he  would  aid  them  with  his  arque- 
buses against  their  foes.  He  was  now  a  competitive  trader,  and  he 
tells  us  how  he  cajoled  the  wily  savages.  "They  said,  'See  how 
many  Basques  and  Malouins  thci'e  are  here  now,  and  they  all  offer 
to  be  our  allies  and  to  fight  for  us.  What  do  you  think  ?  Speak 
the  truth.'  'No,  they  won't,'  I  answered,  and  I  pointed  out  that 
their  only  object  was  to  wheedle  them  out  of  their  furs.  The 
Indians  were  convinced  and  said,  'You  speak  truly.  They  are 
nothing  but  women  and  only  want  to  make  war  upon  our  beavers.' 
They  made  some  other  jokes  and  talked  over  their  plans 
for  making  war.  They  agreed  to  leave  and  await  me  at 
Three  Rivers,  thirty  leagues  above  Quebec,  where  I  promised  to 


SECOND  ATTACK  ON  THE  IROQUOIS.  97 

join  them  with  four  boatloads  of  merchandise  to  be  exchanged 
for  their  pehries,  and  for  those  of  the  Hurons,  who  were  to  join  us 
with  400  warriors  at  the  mouth  of  the  Richeheu,  as  had  been 
agreed  upon  the  year  before."  To  what  degree  the  expiry  of  de 
Monts'  concession  had  induced  Champlain  the  year  before  (1609) 
to  join  the  Hurons  and  some  of  the  Algonquin  tribes  in  their  war 
upon  the  Iroquois,  as  a  means  of  cementing  friendly  trade  rela- 
tions, it  is  not  easy  to  determine ;  but  we  see  clearly  from  his  jour- 
nal, that  he  considers  that  the  strongest  weapon  Jie  could  now 
wield  against  his  French  rivals  in  business  was  an  offensive  and 
defensive  alliance  with  the  enemies  of  the  Iroquois.  Do  what 
he  might,  however,  the  competition  was  sharp  and  ruinous, 
for  Lescarbot,  after  quoting  other  reasons  which  the  mer- 
chants of  St.  Malo  used  against  de  Monts'  concession,  says, 
"I  am  not  retained  to  defend  his  cause,  but  this  I  do  know,  that 
to-day,  with  trade  free,  beaver  skins  sell  at  tw'ice  the  price  to 
the  Indians  which  they  formerly  did,  for  the  greed  of  the  mer- 
chants is  so  uncontrollable  that,  in  bidding  against  one  another, 
they  spoil  their  own  game.  Eight  years  ago  a  beaver  skin  could 
be  had  for  a  couple  of  loaves  or  a  knife,  but  to-day  an  Indian  de- 
mands fifteen  or  twenty.  And,  in  this  year  of  grace  1610.  there 
are  traders  who  have  given  all  their  goods  gratuitously  to  the 
savages  simply  to  hurt  the  trade  of  the  Sieur  de  Poutrincourt 
(Sieur  de  Monts'  old  partner  in  Acadia).  Such  is  the  envy  and 
avarice  of  men." 

The  summer  was  spent,  as  was  the  last,  in  war  against  the 
Iroquois.  Ascending  the  river  Champlain  was  joined  by  the 
Montagnais  at  Three  Rivers.  While  they  and  some  of  the  rival 
traders  were  camped  at  the  mouth  of  the  Richelieu,  an  Algonquin 
canoe  arrived  and  warned  him  that  the  Iroquois  to  the  number 
of  one  hundred  were  strongly  barricaded  in  the  neighborhood. 
Champlain  and  some  of  his  men  followed  the  Indians  to  the  at- 
tack. The  savages  rushed  impetuously  ahead,  and  were  being 
severely  handled  by  the  Iroquois  when  Champlain  and  his  men 
came  to  their  assistance.  Before  the  fight  closed,  by  the  assault 
of  the  palisaded  enclosure,  a  young  trader  from  St.  Malo,  called 
Gibraire  (Gabriel),  one  of  his  rivals,  was  moved  by  the  sound  of 


98  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

battle  to  follow  and  engage  in  the  fray.  A  complete  rout  ensued, 
and  fifteen  prisoners  were  taken.  One  was  at  his  request  given 
to  Champlain ;  the  others  suffered,  some  of  them  at  once,  others 
subsequently  at  the  hands  of  the  squaws,  the  usual  exquisite  tor- 
ture. Then  trade  succeeded  war,  and,  as  not  infrequently  hap- 
pens, those  who  had  been  backward  as  warriors  succeeded  best 
as  merchants.  Champlain  bemoans  the  fact  that  his  rivals,  who 
had  risked  nothing  as  explorers  or  as  soldiers,  nevertheless  se- 
cured the  bulk  of  the  peltries. 

Whether,  on  the  whole,  Champlain  was  as  successful  in  trade 
as  in  war  during  that  summer  he  does  not  tell,  but,  on  arriving  at 
Quebec,  he  decided  to  return  with  little  delay  to  France.  Pont- 
grave  wished  to  winter  in  Quebec,  but  Champlain  argued 
that,  from  appearances  at  the  moment — by  which  we  may 
presume  he  meant  a  scarcity  or  high  price  of  skins — nothing  would 
be  gained  by  his  remaining.  He  further  urged  that  his  testimony 
as  to  the  effect  on  trade  of  the  ruinous  competition  created  by  the 
Norman  and  Breton  merchants,  might  aid  his  employers  in  plead- 
ing for  a  concession.  The  argument  convinced  Pontgrave  and  he 
consented  to  accompany  his  chief.  When  these  questions  were 
settled,  Champlain  says :  "W'e  resolved  that  Du  Pare,  who  had 
wintered  in  Quebec  with  Captain  Pierre,  should  be  left  in  charge, 
and  that  Captain  Pierre  should  return  to  France  by  reason  of  cer- 
tain business  which  required  his  presence  there.  We  therefore 
left  Du  Pare  in  command  of  sixteen  men,  whom  we  admonished 
to  live  wisely  in  the  fear  of  God,  to  obey  their  chief  and  leader, 
Du  Pare,  as  though  he  were  ourselves.  All  of  which  they  prom- 
ised to  do,  and  pledged  themselves  to  abide  in  peace  one  with 
another."  The  garden  was  well  stocked  when  they  left  early  on 
August  15th,  1610,  despairing  evidently  of  gathering  more  furs  by 
a  longer  stay  on  the  river.  How  it  befell  the  Tadousac  post  he 
does  not  tell,  but  probably  ill,  for  de  Monts'  privilege,  as  we 
know,  had  expired,  and  trade  on  the  St.  Lawrence  from  the 
mouth  to  the  Lakes  being  free,  it  had  been,  as  usually  happens, 
overdone.  Champlain  remarks  with  a  certain  ill-disguised  satis- 
faction, on  "the  loss  which  a  number  of  merchants  had  sustained, 
who  had  laid  in  great  stores  of  merchandise  and  equipped  a  fleet 


PLANS  FOR  EXPLORATION.  99 

of  vessels  in  the  hope  of  doing  a  profitable  traffic  in  furs" ;  adding 
that  "their  preparations  were  out  of  ah  proportion  to  the  amount 
of  trade,  so  that  some  of  them  will  remember  for  many  a  day  the 
ruin  which  overtook  them  here."  The  losses  were  probably  not 
confined  to  his  rivals. 

What  business  arrangements  were  made  during  the  winter  of 
1610-1611  we  are  not  told.  We  know  that  no  concessions  were 
granted,  but  the  old  partnership  between  de  Monts,  Collier,  and 
Poutrincourt  was  maintained.  Before  Champlain  sailed  in  the 
spring  he  married  the  Demoiselle  Helene  Boulle,  a  daughter  of 
the  secretaire  de  la  cJiauihrc  d\i  roi  (secretary  of  the  King's 
chamber).  It  was  rather  a  contract  of  marriage  than  a  marriage 
itself,  for  the  girl  was  only  a  child  of  twelve.  It  is  stated  that  by 
way  of  dot  de  Boulle  extended  material  assistance  to  the  Canadian 
schemes  of  de  Monts  and  Champlain.  De  Boulle  was  a  Huguenot. 
Whether  it  was  a  marriage  or  a  betrothal,  it  did  not  detain  him,  for 
the  lover  set  sail  on  the  ist  of  March.  Being  beset  with  ice,  he  did 
not  reach  Tadousac  till  the  13th  of  May.  Snow  covered  the 
ground,  but  early  as  it  was,  and  expeditious  as  he  had  been,  three 
trading  vessels  had  reached  the  Saguenay  before  him.  They  had 
gained  nothing  by  haste,  however,  for  the  Indians,  who  had  be- 
come masters  of  finesse,  refused  to  trade  till  the  whole  fleet  had 
arrived,  and  until,  under  the  stimulus  of  many  bidders,  the  price 
of  their  wares  should  rise.  Leaving  Pontgrave  at  Tadousac  to 
get  what  share  he  could  of  the  trade,  Champlain  himself  pro- 
ceeded to  Quebec.  His  Indian  friends  of  the  year  before  were 
there  to  welcome  him.  He  had  already  acquired  some  knowledge  of 
the  Richelieu  and  Lake  Champlain,  and  may  have  foreseen  that  the 
English  would  pre-empt  what  traffic  there  was  with  the  Iroquois, 
and  the  seaboard  tribes.  He  therefore  looked  toward  the  north 
and  wished  to  explore,  by  way  of  the  St.  Maurice  from  Three 
Rivers,  that  vast  country  where  the  Saguenay  Indians  hunted, 
hoping  to  tap  it  at  some  inland  point  not  so  easily  reached  as  was 
Tadousac  by  his  rivals  in  trade.  He  therefore  proposed  such  a 
summer  voyage  to  his  dusky  ally,  Batiscan,  but  his  suggestion  was 
met  by  an  ofifer  to  guide  him  thither  next  year,  not  that  summer. 
The  Indian  probably  divined  his  motive,  and  was  by  no  means  in- 


lOO  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

clined  to  further  any  scheme  for  monopoHzing  trade.  There  was 
at  the  post  the  agent  of  another  company,  "a  young  man  from  Ro- 
chelle  named  Trefort,"  who  oti'ered  to  accompany  him  on  his 
summer  expedition,  but  Champlain  very  naturally  refused :  he 
had  his  own  plans  and  motives  for  the  trip,  and  had  no  notion  of 
being  any  one  else's  guide,  especially  if  it  were  to  his  own  preju- 
dice ;  if  the  young  man  were  bent  on  going,  there  were  other  com- 
panions for  him  to  choose  from ;  certainly  he,  Champlain,  was  not 
going  to  help  him  to  find  new  paths  for  commerce.  Clearly  de 
Monts'  rivals  had  followed  him  above  Tadousac,  and  were  not  only 
watching  every  motion  of  his  agents,  but  were  inculcating  danger- 
ous precepts  and  suspicions  in  the  minds  of  the  Indians.  Cham- 
plain therefore  made  haste  to  assemble  his  Huron  allies  at  the 
rendezvous  at  the  foot  of  the  rapids  near  old  Hochelaga,  where  the 
year  before  they  had  agreed  to  meet  on  the  20th  of  May.  While 
waiting  for  them,  he  was  joined  on  the  ist  of  June  by  Pontgrave, 
who  had  been  unable  to  do  anything  at  Tadousac.  The  buyers 
were  too  many,  and  the  price  of  furs  was  probably  higher  than  he 
had  been  accustomed  to  pay.  But  his  rivals  had  been  equally  un- 
fortunate, for  a  goodly  company  followed  him  up  the  river  to  com- 
pete with  him  there  for  trade.  A  few  days  afterward  four  or  five 
more  barks  arrived,  the  owners  of  whicli  had  been  unsuccessful  at 
Tadousac. 

At  length  the  Hurons  arrived,  and  with  them  the  French  lad 
whom  Champlain  had  entrusted  to  them,  and  who  in  the  interval 
had  learned  their  language  and  appeared  habited  in  native  cos- 
tume. On  the  other  hand  the  Indians  welcomed  with  joy  the 
hostage  whom  they  had  delivered  to  Champlain  in  the  previous 
summer,  and  who  had  returned  from  France  with  many  a  story 
of  French  greatness  and  of  Champlain's  influence.  They  testified 
their  satisfaction  by  turning  their  back  on  the  other  traders,  whose 
presence  in  such  numbers  had  aroused  their  suspicion  or  their 
cupidity,  and  making  a  treaty  with  Champlain.  In  confirmation 
they  gave  him  one  hundred  beaver  skins,  and  subsequently  traded 
for  all  they  had,  which  was  little.  Then  followed  a  nocturnal 
council  in  which  Champlain  took  part,  pledging  his  faith  to  aid 
them.     The  deliberations  turned  on  the  point  as  to  whether  they 


NEGOTIATIONS  WITH  THE  HURONS.  lOI 

should  allow  the  boy  of  a  certain  rival  French  trader  to  winter 
with  them,  as  Chaniplain's  emissary  had  done  the  previous  year. 
Champlain  dare  not  avow  his  jealousy  of  his  French  brethren,  lest 
he  should  weaken  the  Indians'  fear  of  that  little  band  of  white 
faces  isolated  in  a  boundless  wilderness ;  but  he  dexterously 
managed  to  frustrate  his  rival's  scheme.  Then  came  other  bands 
of  Indians  from  the  distant  lakes  with  a  few  beaver  skins,  where- 
upon fresh  protestations  of  friendship  and  pledges  of  assistance 
were  given,  and  another  youth  was  assigned  to  the  Hurons. 

Thus  passed  the  summer  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Lake  of 
the  Two  Mountains.  Little  actual  business  was  done ;  not 
many  beaver  skins  were  obtained ;  but  the  prudent  leader  was 
gathering  information;  promoting  a  good  understanding  with 
the  Indians  who  lived  to  the  north  of  the  river  and  the  lakes ; 
and  weakening  the  influence  of  his  French  competitors  in  trade. 
In  Quebec  he  saw  to  the  repairs  of  the  habitation;  planted  some 
rose  trees ;  loaded  a  cargo  of  oak,  which  he  hoped  would  prove 
acceptable  in  France  for  wainscoting;  then  paid  a  visit  to  the 
company's  other  trading  post  at  Tadousac,  where,  after  taking 
counsel  with  Pontgrave,  he  decided  to  return  to  France,  which 
he  did  in  the  ship  of  a  certain  Captain  Tibaut  of  Rochelle,  presum- 
ably one  of  his  rivals,  nevertheless  a  friend,  arriving -at  La 
Rochelle  on  September  lo,  1611.  He  told  de  Monts  the  story 
of  what  had  happened,  of  his  plans  for  the  future,  of  the 
treaty  with  the  Hurons,  involving  a  promise  to  help  them  in  their 
wars  if  they  would  accord  him  preferences  in  trade ;  of  the  advan- 
tage this  would  give  the  society  over  their  rivals,  apart  from  the 
fact  that  a  post  on  one  of  the  great  lakes,  far  above  marine 
navigation,  would  be  inaccessible  to  the  casual  trader.  De 
Monts,  with  his  habitual  energy  and  courage,  was  ready  to  risk 
more,  even  though  the  past  season  had  been  so  disastrous,  and 
though  the  maintenance  of  the  two  posts  at  Tadousac  and  Quebec, 
and  the  founding  of  two  others,  one  at  Mont  Royal  and  one  in  the 
country  of  the  Hurons,  would  draw  heavily  on  his  pecuniary  re- 
sources. His  more  prudent  partners,  however,  did  not  share  his 
enthusiasm,  and  refused  to  participate  in  the  risk.  Thereupon  de 
Monts,  nothing  daunted,  was  proceeding  to  negotiate  with  them 


102  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

as  to  the  terms  upon  which  they  would  be  wilhng  to  sell  out  their 
interest  in  the  Habitation  dc  Quebec,  when  circumstances  oc- 
curred— Champlain's  narrative  does  not  explain  what  they  were — 
that  obliged  de  Monts  to  change  his  mind,  and  to  retire  finally 
from  the  struggle  which  he  had  waged  uninterruptedly  against 
adverse  fortune  for  twelve  years,  and  from  the  heroic  but  futile 
attempt  to  found  a  new  France  in  the  New  World  on  the  basis 
of  a  narrow  trade  policy.  Yet  of  all  the  pioneers  of  France  in 
this  New  World  of  ours,  none  is  more  worthy  of  honorable  re- 
cognition, and  none  has  received  it  less  than  de  Monts.  His  own 
personality  has  always  been  overshadowed  by  that  of  his  more 
active  associates,  Poutrincourt,  Champlain,  even  Pontgrave. 

Champlain  now  steps  forward  as  principal,  not  as  a  subordi- 
nate :  as  the  lieutenant  of  the  Prince  de  Conde,  not  as  the  mere 
manager  of  a  mercantile  company.  But  whatever  his  role,  our 
eyes  are  riveted  on  him  as  the  chief  actor  on  the  stage,  one 
who  never  failed  to  play  his  part  with  energy  and  courage,  if  not 
always  with  judgment. 

Upon  the  dissolution  of  the  old  company  of  de  ]\Ionts,  Collier 
and  le  Gendre,  Champlain  determined  to  carry  on  the  enterprise 
himself,  if  he  could  command  the  means.  He  was  the  more  im- 
pelled to  persevere  by  the  glowing  report  sent  him  from  the  lake 
country  by  some  of  the  men  who  had  accompanied  a  small  Huron 
band  up  the  Ottawa,  and  had  met  the  main  body  of  the  Indians 
descending  to  the  rendezvous.  On  returning,  his  messengers  had 
found  him  gone  ;  but  his  competitors  were  there,  and  tried  to  wean 
away  his  allies,  who  were  naturally  disheartened  at  his  non-appear- 
ance and  by  reports  of  his  death.  His  men  had  taken  upon  them- 
selves, in  his  absence,  to  promise  that  in  the  following  spring  he 
w^ould  join  them  and  wipe  out  their  enemies.  This  pledge  he  deter- 
mined to  redeem.  The  objects  of  his  special  aversion,  because  prob- 
ably his  keenest  rivals,  were  the  merchants  of  St.  ^Malo.  The  reason 
they  alleged  against  privileged  companies  trading  in  the  St. 
Lawrence,  apart  from  the  general  principle,  was  that  if  the  right 
to  trade  was  to  be  confined  to  those  who  made  discovery,  then  St. 
Malo,  the  birthplace  of  Jacques  Cartier,  should  decidedly  have  the 


THE  DE  MONTS  COMPANY  SUPERSEDED.  IO3 

preference.  Champlain  found  the  argument  so  hard  to  answer 
that  for  once  it  ruffled  his  imperturbable  good  humor. 

One  reason  why  de  Monts'  partners  hesitated  to  incur  further 
risk  may  have  been  the  ahered  status  of  the  Protestants  of  France, 
to  which  body  de  Monts  and  probably  his  associates  belonged. 
For  the  same  reason  it  was  politic  on  Champlain's  part  to  seek 
support,  not  from  merchants,  but  from  a  statesman  of  the  Royal 
House ;  one  who,  commanding  influence  at  court,  could  procure 
concessions  when  mere  traders  could  not,  and  effectually  resist  the 
protests  of  merchants  of  provincial  towns.  Such  a  partner  was 
Charles  de  Bourbon,  the  Count  de  Soissons.  He,  however,  died 
on  November  12,  161 2,  and  his  commission  as  governor  was 
transferred  by  the  Queen  Regent  to  Henry  de  Bourbon,  Prince 
Df  Conde.    He  appointed  Champlain  his  lieutenant. 

Up  to  this  date  Quebec  had  been  a  mere  trading  post, 
consisting  of  a  single  habitation,  protected  by  a  palisade  like 
the  Hudson  Bay  posts  of  the  present  day.  Although  it  had 
entered  the  plans  of  de  Monts  to  found  a  colony  in  the  full 
sense  of  the  term,  the  efl^ort  had  evidently  not  been  seriously 
made.  The  very  short  tenure  of  his  slight  concessions,  and  the 
refusal  of  a  renewal,  were  cause  enough  to  deter  him  from  so 
costly  an  undertaking.  Women  and  children  were  not  sent  out 
by  him,  nor  yet  were  there  any  priests,  who,  despite  the  Huguenot 
proclivities  of  de  Monts  and  his  partners,  would  certainly  have  ac- 
companied any  band  of  permanent  colonists ;  for  Champlain,  a 
Catholic  himself,  would  not  have  led  forth  a  body  of  Frenchmen 
with  their  families  to  live  and  die  without  the  consolations  of 
religion.  The  little  band  of  laborers  and  mechanics,  who  occupied 
the  habitation  as  de  Monts'  employees,  found  more  or  less 
occupation  in  supplying  the  post  with  meat  by  hunting  and 
fishing;  in  lumbering:  in  boat  and  ship  building;  in  cultivating 
the  little  garden ;  in  traffic  with  the  Indians,  and  in  doing  nothing, 
which  is  still  the  most  congenial  occupation  of  all  such  small  com- 
munities isolated  in  the  wilderness.  We  know  the  names  of  two 
only  of  these  first  inhabitants  of  Quebec — Captain  Pierre  Chavin, 
and  Captain  Du  Pare.  We  know  that  one  of  them  at  anv  rate 
was  not  a  permanent  resident ;  the  task  of  defending  the  post  dur- 


I04  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

ing  the  long,  weary  winter  was  not  a  grateful  one,  and  Champlain" 
did  not  impose  that  duty  on  the  same  members  of  his  crew  year 
after  year.  It  is  true  the  house  was  comfortable ;  the  climate  was 
understood,  and  the  season,  for  fishing  and  the  habits  of  the  game, 
which,  though  not  plentiful,  was  by  no  means  scarce,  had  become 
known ;  consequently  neither  cold  nor  scarcity  of  fresh  provisions, 
bred  disease,  not  one  death  being  reported  after  the  first  year's 
attack  of  scurvy.  Nevertheless,  the  task  of  wintering  in  Quebec 
was  not  a  pleasant  one.  The  habitation  as  yet  was  prob- 
ably the  only  house ;  for  we  are  not  led  to  suppose  that  the  free 
traders  from  St.  Malo  and  La  Rochelle,  though  they  watched 
Champlain's  every  movement  and  dogged  his  steps,  built  any  per- 
manent structure  on  the  Quebec  beach.  Notwithstanding  there 
had  been  three  years  of  free  trade,  and  the  ships  of  their  rival 
fleets  came  year  after  year  in  increasing  numbers,  there  is  no  men- 
tion of  their  crews  wintering  on  the  river.  On  the  contrary 
Champlain  says  "they  exposed  themselves  to  needless  danger 
from,  the  ice  through  their  insatiate  greed,  and  their  haste  to  be 
first  at  the  trading  points." 

Probably  for  four  years  there  was  actual  freedom  of  trade  on 
the  St.  Lawrence,  for  Champlain's  commission  as  lieutenant  of 
the  Count  de  Soissons  is  dated  in  October,  1612,  or  more  than 
a  year  after  his  return  to  France  with  Captain  Tibaut  of  La 
Rochelle.  During  that  year  of  disappointment  and  of  anxiety 
while  trying  to  organize  a  new  company  under  his  own  control ; 
and  of  revived,  though  interrupted  hopes,  when  he  succeeded  first 
in  interesting  in  his  enterprise  the  powerful  Charles  de  Bourbon, 
Governor  of  Dauphin  and  Normandy,  and  then  the  uncle  of  that 
nobleman,  Henry  of  Bourbon,  the  Governor  of  Guyenne,  the  in- 
dependent traders  had  undisputed  control  l3oth  of  the  lower  and 
of  the  upper  reaches  of  the  river. 

With  the  year  1612  passed  the  initial  stage  of  the  history  of 
Quebec,  for  with  the  appointment  of  Henry  of  Conde  as  Governor 
and  Lieutenant-General  of  New  France,  and  Champlain  as  his 
lieutenant,  the  old  trading  privileges,  thougli  with  a  restricted 
area,  were  again  granted.  They  do  not  appear  in  the  concession  of 
Charles  of  Bourbon,  but  in  Charles'  commission  to  Champlain, 


REGULATION   OF   THE   ST.    LAWRENCE   TRADE.  I05 

dated  October  15,  1612,  authority  is  delegated  him  to  pursue  all 
trespassers  within  descril)ed  limits.  He  is  instructed,  by  peace- 
able means  or  by  war,  to  bring  the  Indians  to  a  knowledge  of  the 
true  faith ;  but  if  possible  to  live  in  amity,  and  to  trade  with  them. 
To  that  end  he  is  to  push  discovery  and  exploration,  but  es- 
pecially of  the  country  above  Quebec  and  of  the  rivers  flowing 
into  the  upper  St.  Lawrence,  in  the  hope  of  finding  a  route  to 
China  and  the  East  Indies,  and  of  discovering  mines  of  gold  and 
other  metals.  He  is  thus  commissioned  to  do  what  only  in  our 
own  generation  has  been  accomplished.  The  commission  proceeds 
— "and  wherever  the  said  Champlain  shall  find  Frenchmen  or  men 
of  other  nations  trading  or  holding  any  communication  with  the 
Indians  at  or  above  Quebec,  which  district  is  reserved  by  Her 
Majesty,  the  Queen  Regent,  he  is  authorized  to  seize  these  ves- 
sels, merchandise,  and  all  their  property,  and  to  take  the  ships 
thus  captured  to  France  to  one  of  the  ports  of  Normandy,  where 
they  will  be  condemned  by  the  proper  tribunal."  A  compromise 
was  thus  established  between  Champlain  and  his  rivals  of  St. 
Malo  and  La  Rochelle.  The  river  was  to  be  open  to  free  trade 
as  high  as  Quebec.  The  old  post  of  Tadousac,  which  had  been 
frec|uented  by  merchants  and  sailors  since  the  time  of  Jacques 
Cartier,  was  to  remain  open,  but  the  country  west  of  Quebec, 
which  it  was  the  intention  of  the  new  company  to  penetrate,  and 
to  which  Champlain  with  justice  laid  claim,  on  the  ground  that  he 
and  his  old  associates  had  already  risked  much  in  exploring  it,  was 
to  be  closed  to  outside  traders.  Quebec  would  thus  continue  to  be 
virtually  a  frontier  post  of  the  trading  company,  and,  as  we  shall 
see,  its  growth  was  to  be  dwarfed  by  the  swaddling  clothes  of 
trade  restrictions  and  selfish  trade  regulations  for  many  a  year. 


CHAPTER   VI. 

Canadian  Adventurers  Under  the  Prince  of  Cond^  and 
the  Arrival  of  the  Recollet  Fathers,  1612-I6J8. 

The  second  company  of  Quebec  adventurers,  though  as  strenu- 
ously bent  on  trade  as  its  predecessor,  was  moved  by  a  more 
determined  spirit  of  colonization,  and  by  a  more  sincere,  though 
not  very  ardent,  desire  to  Christianize  the  Indians.  The  very 
transitory  concessions  under  which  de  Monts  ventured  to  com- 
mence trading  on  the  upper  St.  Lawrence  in  1608,  and  the  dis- 
astrous competition  he  had  to  meet  after  one  year  of  protection 
had  elapsed,  did  not  encourage  him  to  expend  money  on  a  coloni- 
zation scheme  which  could  not  by  any  possibility  redound  to  his 
profit.  And  it  must  be  remembered  that  individually  no  French- 
men then  left  the  mother  country — few  do  even  yet — at  their 
own  risk  and  on  their  own  initiative,  to  sink  their  fortune  in 
the  wilds  of  an  unknown  and  barbarous  land.  Even  English 
colonists  of  that  date  emigrated  as  members  of  an  organization,  as 
shareholders,  for  instance,  in  trading  companies,  such  as  that  of 
Virginia,  or  as  a  congregation  of  worshippers,  following  their 
pastor  and  retaining  their  ecclesiastical  identity.  This  was  the 
case  with  some  of  the  New  England  settlements.  De  Monts  and 
his  associates  were  Huguenots.  In  attempting  to  colonize 
Acadia  he  had  made  the  unfortunate  experiment  of  associating 
in  the  work  of  evangelization  Roman  Catholic  priests  with 
Protestant  divines.  He  had  found  that  they  were  more 
active  in  quarreling  with  one  another  than  in  converting  the 
heathen,  and  he  was  not  prompted,  therefore,  to  repeat  the  at- 
tempt to  mitigate  the  cold  of  a  Canadian  winter  by  the  heat  of 
ecclesiastical  polemics.  There  was  sure  to  be  discord  enough 
in  the  habitation  without  infusing  the  bitterness  of  religious 
controversy.  Consequently  he  omitted  from  his  crew  all  clerg\', 
both  Catholic  and  Reformed.     There  was  no  missionary  spirit 


PLANS   OF    COLONIZATION.  IO7 

among  the  Protestant  communities  of  Europe,  and  least  of  all 
in  France,  where  the  whole  energy  of  dissent  was  expended 
in  the  arduous  task  of  propagating  opinions  and  practices 
which  were  not  in  harmony  with  the  taste  of  the  masses,  and  in 
fighting  with  carnal  weapons  for  liberty  of  conscience  and  politi- 
cal freedom ;  both  of  which  would  have  followed  sooner  or 
later,  had  the  reformers  gained  the  upper  hand  and  influenced  the 
opinions  of  the  whole  of  the  French  people.  Worried  by  past 
failures  and  struggling  with  a  difficult  financial  problem,  de  Monts 
took  no  other  steps  towards  fulfilling  the  very  religious  aims 
assigned  by  the  least  religious  of  monarchs  as  the  prime  motive 
for  striving — principally  at  other  people's  expense — to  extend  the 
domain  of  France.  The  King's  professed  object  was  the  conver- 
sion of  the  savages.  It  would  be  presumptuous  to  assert  that  even 
Francis  I.,  with  all  his  moral  obliquity,  was  not  sincere  in  his  de- 
sire to  bring  the  blessings  of  Holy  Church,  which  he  had  himself 
often  found  consolatory,  within  reach  of  the  benighted  heathen. 
De  Monts  and  his  associates,  however,  must  have  appreciated  the 
utter  impossibility  of  winning  over  the  red  man  to  the  philosophy 
of  Calvin,  or  of  influencing  his  imagination  by  the  bare  and  bald 
form  of  worship  which  the  Huguenots  had  substituted  for  the  im- 
pressive and  highly  dramatic  ritual  of  Rome.  Consequently,  when 
Henry  IV.  died  under  the  hand  of  the  assassin,  and  they  had 
lost  his  support,  which  was  at  least  sympathetic,  if  not  active, 
and  which  would  certainly  have  protected  them  from  injustice, 
the  company,  and  even  de  Monts  himself,  probably  decided  that 
the  true  policy  was  to  spend  as  little,  and  save  as  much  as  they 
honestly  could,  during  the  brief  term  of  life  that  their  enemies 
would  allow  to  their  organization.  The  political  status  of  their 
successors,  Charles  of  Bourbon,  and,  on  his  death,  another 
Bourbon,  Henry,  Prince  of  Conde,  both  princes  of  the  blood, 
was  widely  difi^erent.  Nevertheless,  the  progress  of  coloniza- 
tion under  the  new  organization  was  but  little  more  rapid 
than  under  de  Monts.  In  1622  Champlain  said  the  population  of 
Quebec  was  only  50  persons,  including  women  and  children ;  by 
1624  it  had  increased  to  61  ;  in  1626  to  65,  and  when  in  1628  Louis 
Kirke  captured  Quebec  the  whole  population,  including  a  family 


108  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

at  Cap  Tourmente,  was  between  55  and  60 ;  though,  if  the  priests 
and  friars  and  the  French  to  the  number  of  20  in  the  Huron  coun- 
try be  included,  the  number  of  inhabitants  in  the  whole  of  Canada 
must  be  reckoned  at  about  100.  All  these,  not  excepting  the 
priests,  were  dependent  for  their  support  on  the  company.  There 
was  no  inducement  offered  to  casual  self-supporting  immigrants 
to  establish  themselves  in  the  country. 

When  Champlain  returned  to  Quebec  in  Pontgrave's  ship  on 
May  7,  1613,  he  had  been  absent  for  twenty-one  months.  For 
two  winters,  therefore,  the  little  company  of  pioneers,  which  he 
found  safe  and  sound,  had  been  left  to  their  own  resources,  unless 
possibly  Pontgrave  had  visited  them  in  the  summer  of  1612.  They 
were  not,  however,  without  news  of  the  outside  world,  for  the 
skippers  of  St.  Alalo  and  La  Rochelle  had  taken  advantage  of 
Champlain's  detention  in  France  to  ingratiate  themselves  with  the 
Indians,  and  to  push  their  trade  even  with  the  remoter  Ottawa  and 
Huron  tribes.  It  was  the  last  year  that  they  could  traffic  untram- 
meled,  for,  though  the  terms  of  the  Association  under  the  Prince 
of  Conde  permitted  any  merchant  to  be  a  member  and  to  share  in 
its  trade,  this  provision  did  not  satisfy  the  merchants  of  Rouen  and 
St.  Malo.  It  was  probably  limited  by  conditions  that  made  the 
concession  valueless,  though  the  company  would  seem  to  have  been 
constituted  on  the  plan  of  the  English  Regulated  Companies  of 
the  sixteenth  century,  which  allowed  any  member  to  trade  on 
his  own  account  within  the  sphere  of  the  company's  operations. 
This  concession  was  all  the  merchants  could  wring  in  the  mean- 
time out  of  the  Government.  Under  it  three  vessels  from  Rouen, 
one  from  La  Rochelle,  and  another  from  St.  ]Malo  were  fitted 
otit,  one  of  the  conditions  being  that  the  crew  of  each  vessel  should 
furnish  four  men  to  Champlain  in  the  exploratory'  and  predatory 
expedition  which  he  had  promised  the  Hurons  to  make  into  the 
country  of  the  Iroquois.  At  this  stage  of  progress  the  Parliament 
of  Rouen  interfered,  forbidding  the  publication  of  the  King's  de- 
cree within  the  limits  of  its  jurisdiction,  as  being  an  infringement 
of  its  prerogative,  though,  if  Champlain's  suspicions  were  correct, 
the  action  was  taken  at  the  instance  of  the  merchants  of  St.  ]\Ialo. 
The  Parliament  having  been  persuaded  to  withdraw  its  opposition. 


CHAM  PLAIN    AT    SAULT    ST.    LOUIS.  IO9 

Chaniplain's  concession  was  published  in  all  the  ports  of  Nor- 
mandy. There  embarked  with  him  a  certain  L'Ange,  a  Parisian 
and  a  poet,  who,  having  just  indited  an  ode  to  Champlain  as  a  pre- 
face to  his  volume  of  travels  published  in  the  same  year  of  161 3, 
was  now  bent  on  assisting  his  hero  to  discover  the  road  to  the 
Orient.    In  his  apostrophe  to  Henry  IV.  he  avers : 

Si  le  ciel  t'eut  laisse  plus  long  temps  ici  bas, 

Tu  nous  eusse  assemble  la  France  avec  la  Chine. 

Had  heaven  but  left  thee  longer  here  below, 
France  had  been  linked  to  China  before  now. 

They  arrived  at  Tadousac  the  29th  of  April,  by  the  same  tide 
as  the  Sieur  de  Boyer  of  Rouen  who  had  sailed  before  them,  and 
who,  we  may  presume,  was  one  of  the  partners.  The  next  day 
two  vessels  of  St.  Malo  came  into  port,  which  had  sailed  be- 
fore the  Parliament  of  Rouen  had  permitted  the  King's  commis- 
sion and  the  concession  of  the  company  to  be  published  in  Nor- 
mandie.  The  owners  promised  to  respect  the  privilege  granted 
to  the  company,  but  Champlain  nevertheless  lost  no  time  in  push- 
ing on  to  Quebec.  Even  there  he  only  tarried  six  days  before 
ascending  the  river  to  Sault  St.  Louis,  where  he  hoped  to  find 
Hurons  willing  to  guide  him  into  the  interior.  In  this  he  was 
disappointed ;  one  band  was  awaiting  him,  but  they  had  taken  two 
prisoners,  and  must  hurry  home  that  their  women  might  have 
the  pleasure  of  torturing  them.  Another  band  descended  the 
Ottawa  with  a  paltry  lot  of  furs,  but  they  complained  of  ill- 
treatment  at  the  hands  of  the  French  traders  the  year  before, 
and  would  not  accept  Champlain's  protestations  of  friendship 
and  promise  of  aid  as  sincere.  At  length  he  secured  two  canoes 
and  one  Indian  as  a  guide,  with  which  to  explore  the  Ottawa 
and  verify  the  wonderful  tales  told  by  Nicolas  de  Vignau,  the 
Frenchman  who  had  wintered  with  the  Indians  in  1611-12.  and 
who  had  seen  with  his  own  eyes  the  great  north  sea,  perhaps  the 
Hudson  Bay.  The  summer  was  spent  in  exploring  the  Ottawa, 
and  incidentally  proving  the  said  Nicolas  de  Vignau  to  be  the  most 


no  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

impudent  and  consummate  liar  that  Champlain  had  met  for  many 
a  day.  On  returning  to  Sault  St.  Louis,  or  probably  his  quarters 
on  the  island  of  St.  Helen,  a  spot  of  pleasant  associations,  as  he 
named  it  after  his  wife,  he  was  met  by  L'Ange,  who  told  him  of 
the  arrival  of  the  Sieur  de  Maisonneuve,  with  a  passport  from 
Mons.  le  Prince,  as  proof  of  identity,  and  three  ships.  Cham- 
plain  had  already  warned  the  Indians  against  trading  with  urn- 
authorized  merchants,  but  on  Maisonneuve's  arrival  he  introduced 
him  to  the  savages  as  a  friend ;  and  if  he  was  the  Sieur  Paul  de 
Chomedey,  Sieur  de  Maisonneuve,  who  in  1641  helped  to  found 
Montreal,  he  was  worthy  of  the  title.  The  Sieur  de  Maisonneuve 
offering  him  a  passage  to  France,  two  vessels  were  left  at  the 
Sault,  till  the  Indians  should  return  from  the  wars  with,  it  was 
hoped,  more  peltries  than  they  had  yet  produced.  Champlain  and 
L'Ange  then  dropped  down  the  stream  with  their  host,  and,  pass- 
ing Quebec,  reached  Tadousac  on  the  6th  of  July.  There  they 
remained,  either  to  trade  or  because  the  weather  was  unfavor- 
able, until  August  8,  when  they  sailed  for  France.  '    .- 

Thus  another  year  passed  uneventfully  over  Quebec.  As  it 
was  at  the  headwaters  of  free  trade,  many  a  captain  of  St.  Malo 
and  La  Rochelle  anchored  in  the  stream  in  the  hope  of  doing 
some  business  with  the  Indians ;  but  Champlain  and  Maisonneuve, 
aided  by  Sieur  Georges  of  Rochelle,  Sieur  Boyer  of  Rouen,  and 
members  of  the  company,  stopped  all  descending  traffic.  We 
can  imagine  the  angry  protests  of  the  disappointed  competitors  for 
the  fur  trade,  as  around  their  camp  fires  under  the  cliffs,  groups 
of  sailors  and  traders  discussed  their  hardships  with  one  another 
and  with  the  residents.  ^ 

Champlain  spent,  doubtless  not  unwillingly,  well-nigfi  the 
whole  of  the  next  two  years  with  his  wife  in  France,  though 
the  troubles  of  the  company  fully  occupied  his  time.  He  found 
it  very  difficult,  as  promoters  of  monopoly  find  it  to-day,  to  per- 
suade the  advocates  of  competition  that  their  interests  and  the 
public  good  are  forwarded  by  a  restrictive  or  protective  policy. 
The  merchants  of  La  Rochelle,  the  stronghold  of  Huguenot  in- 
dependence, seemed  to  be  most  reluctant  to  join  the  association, 
and  delayed  so  long  in  claiming  their  one-third,  that  the  com- 


THE   RECOLLETS   INVITED  TO   CANADA.  Ill 

pany  was  formed  without  them,  and  a  one-half  interest,  instead  of 
one-third,  was  assigned  to  the  merchants  of  Rouen  and  St.  Malo 
respectively.  Finding  themselves  excluded,  the  traders  of  La 
Rochelle  obtained  from  the  Prince,  by  fraud — par  surpris,  as 
Champlain  calls  it — a  license  for  one  vessel,  which,  as  he  says, 
"was  by  the  kind  permission  of  God,  wrecked  near  Ta- 
dousac."  The  company  confiscated  its  cargo,  though  the  catas- 
trophe did  not  happen  within  the  sphere  of  their  privileges ;  but 
as  the  court  confirmed  the  confiscation,  we  may  assume  that  the 
company  acted  within  its  rights.  There  is  no  reason  for  attribut- 
ing the  seizure  to  religious  bigotry,  as  is  done  by  Abbe  Faillon. 

Besides  acquiring  an  extension  of  the  franchise  for  his  com- 
pany to  eleven  years,  and  regulating  the  conduct  of  its  affairs, 
Champlain  took  the  first  step  towards  converting  his  trading 
post  of  Quebec  into  a  settled  community,  and  really  founding 
a  colony,  by  making  provision  for  religious  instruction  and 
civil  administration.  His  patron,  Charles  of  Bourbon,  was  an 
ardent  Catholic  prince,  and  Champlain  adhered  to  the  ancient 
faith,  though  most  of  the  company's  supporters  were  Huguenots. 
No  drastic  measure  had  yet  been  proposed  to  exclude  the  Re- 
formers either  from  participation  in  the  aft'airs  of  the  company 
or  from  becoming  members  of  the  colony,  but  Champlain's  recol- 
lections of  de  Monts'  attempt  to  introduce  freedom  of  worship 
at  Port  Royal  deterred  him  from  making  a  similar  experiment  at 
Quebec.  Yet  while  he  determined  to  seek  the  services  of  a  Roman 
Catholic  organization,  he  selected  a  branch  of  the  more  tolerant 
Franciscan  order  in  preference  to  Madame  Guercheville's  ad- 
visers, the  Jesuits,  with  whom  his  intercourse  had  probably  not 
been  altogether  pleasant.  Champlain  commenced  his  inquiries 
in  1614,  and  was  led  to  negotiate  first  with  the  papal  nuncio,  and 
then  with  the  General  of  the  Franciscans,  through  the  Sieur 
Houel,  secretary  of  the  King,  and  Comptroller  General  of  the 
Saline  de  Brouage.  The  General  of  the  order,  Pere  de  Verger, 
hesitated  for  a  time  to  embark  on  this  new  mission,  and  thus 
the  sailing  of  the  four  Recollet  missionaries  was  delayed  until 
161 5.  The  men  chosen  were  Father  Denis  Jamay,  commis- 
sionnaire ;  Monsigneur  Jean  d'Olbeau,  prefect,  to  be  his  successor 


112  QUEBEC    IX    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

in  case  of  death ;  Joseph  Le  Caron,  and  Pacifique  du  Plessis.  They 
sailed  from  Honfleur  with  Champlain  himself  in  the  "St.  Etienne" 
of  315  tons  burden,  under  command  of  Pontgrave,  and  landed  at 
Tadousac  on  the  26th  of  2^1ay.  Father  d'Olbeau,  in  his  eagerness 
to  reach  his  mission,  hurried  forward  alone  in  the  first  boat  leav- 
ing for  Quebec ;  the  others  followed  several  days  later,  when 
Champlain  had  completed  his  preparations  for  his  voyage  to  the 
Sault  St.  Louis.  We  may  therefore  infer  that  Tadousac  was,  even 
at  this  date,  better  supplied  than  the  habitation  at  Quebec  with 
boats  and  naval  stores. 

With  the  advent  of  the  priests  at  Quebec,  the  character  of  the 
future  colony  was  determined.  Though  the  majority  of  the 
company's  financial  supporters  may  have  been  Huguenots,  the 
colony  was  to  be  exclusively  under  Roman  Catholic  control  in 
matters  ecclesiastical  and  theological.  Coligny's  hopes  of  forming 
colonies  in  Brazil  and  Florida,  where  men  might  worship  God  as 
their  consciences,  not  the  church  and  the  State,  might  dictate, 
had  been  frustrated.  When  Henry  IV.,  with  his  Protestant 
education  and  liberal  proclivities,  had  fallen  a  victim  to  the 
assassin,  it  was  a  foregone  conclusion  that  the  concessions  to 
Reform,  made  by  the  Edict  of  Xantes,  would  at  least  not  be 
enlarged,  and  that  consequently  Huguenot  immigration  and 
commercial  enterprise  would  not  be  encouraged  in  the  French 
colonies.  Furthermore,  at  a  later  period,  when  the  outcome  of 
religious  reform  in  England  had  been  the  destruction  of  the 
monarchy,  the  execution  of  the  King,  and  the  establishment 
of  a  commonwealth,  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  if  no  Huguenot 
was  permitted  to  enter  and  sow  discord  and  his  pernicious  doc- 
trines in  a  community  where  the  Jesuits  and  Marie  of  Medici 
held  sway.  But  it  was  well  for  Canada  that  her  first  missionaries 
were  followers  of  the  gentle  Francis  d'Assisi,  and  that  she  never 
had  to  cower  under  the  tyranny  of  the  Dominicans,  nor  submit  to 
their  methods  of  evangelization ;  for  the  records  of  the  Order  of 
St.  Dominic  in  the  New  World  illustrate  strikingly  the  warping 
efifccts  which  bigotry  will  produce  on  human  character.  In 
the  early  days  of  Spanish  domination,  the  Dominicans  were  the 
most  strenuous  defenders  of  the  oppressed  Indians.    If  good  and 


SAINTS     AND     INQUISITORS.  II3 

merciful  men  are  canonized  in  heaven,  Las  Casas  is  there  a  saint, 
even  though  the  honor  has  not  been  conferred  upon  him  on 
earth ;  and  yet  the  members  of  the  same  order  presided  over 
the  inconceivable  barbarities  of  the  Lima  Inquisition.  The  Church 
of  France,  under  the  frenzy  of  political  and  religious  excitement, 
may  have  sung  paeans  over  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew, 
but  it  tolerated  only  for  a  short  time  the  cold,  calculating  and 
insatiable  cruelty  of  the  Holy  Office.  The  exclusion  from  Canada 
of  the  Huguenots  was  not  the  only  reason  why  the  orthodox 
heresy  hunters  did  not  follow  their  game  thither,  for  they  found 
full  scope  for  their  fiendish  instincts  in  Spanish  America,  where 
no  senses  less  keen  than  theirs  could  have  detected  the  faintest 
odor  of  heresy.  The  truth  is  that  the  Inquisition  was  always 
abhorrent  to  the  more  tolerant  French  character.  To  this  happy 
circumstance  it  was  doubtless  due  that,  even  in  the  most  modified 
form,  this  unholy  office  was  never  exercised  in  Canada.  There 
were  a  few  heretics  burned  in  France,  but  they  were  not  all  men 
holding  anti-papal  views.  Of  the  twenty-five  "spirituals,"  for  in- 
stance, one  of  the  many  subordinate  orders  of  St.  Francis,  who 
were  cited  to  appear  at  Avignon  in  13 17  before  Pope  John  XXII., 
and  who,  despite  the  papal  command,  continued  to  follow  the  strict 
rules  of  Sieur  Jean  Olive,  four  were  burned  in  Marseilles  in  13 18. 
There  continued  to  be  inquisitions,  though  two  only,  one  at  Tou- 
louse, the  other  at  Carcassone,  originally  intended  to  aid  in  stamp- 
ing out  the  Waldensian  heresy,  existed  at  the  end  of  the  seven- 
teenth century.  The  Dominicans  were  judges  and  executioners, 
though  their  power  was  less  arbitrary  than  in  Spain.  Sieur  Jean 
Olive's  doctrine  was  pronounced  heretical  in  the  following  par- 
ticulars, "that  he  considered  the  divine  essence  engendered ;  that 
the  soul  of  man  is  not  of  the  same  form  as  his  body ;  and  that 
Christ  received  the  lance  wound  before  his  death."  The  Hermit 
Celestin,  another  Franciscan,  was  turned  over  to  the  Inquisition 
and  tortured  in  Trivento,  Naples. 

St.  Dominic  died  in  1221,  St.  Francis  d'Assisi  in  1226.  Both, 
therefore,  saw  the  orders  which  they  founded  flourishing  and 
spreading  over  Europe.  The  creation  of  these  two  preaching  or- 
ders  in   the   thirteenth   centurv,    under   strict   rules   of   celibacy, 


I  14  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

poverty  ancl  obedience,  may  be  regarded  from  one  point  of  view 
as  the  enlistment  of  an  army  to  oppose  heresy  and  schism,  which 
were  then  being  organized  mider  the  banners  of  the  Vaudois,  the 
Albigenses,  the  Petrobrusians,  the  Henricians  and  a  host  of  other 
sects  whose  common  bond  was  an  aversion  to  the  tyranny  of 
Rome.  But  from  another  point  of  view,  the  simultaneous  birth 
and  rapid  growth  of  two  such  bodies  bespeak  the  generation  in 
the  Church  itself  of  a  higher  and  a  purer  life,  the  fruit,  probably, 
of  the  protest  of  many  within  its  bosom  against  the  abounding 
vice,  the  greed  for  wealth,  and  the  reliance  on  brute  force  which 
were  too  visible  in  the  high  places  of  spiritual  authority.  The  new 
monks  were  the  upholders  of  the  strictest  orthodoxy,  and  of  im- 
plicit obedience  to  the  See  of  Rome.  They  preached  in  the  ver- 
nacular, clad  in  coarsest  garb,  and  their  austerity  and  poverty 
stood  out  in  glaring  contrast  to  the  luxury  and  indolence  of  many 
of  the  secular  clerg}-,  and  to  tlie  laxity  in  discipline  into  which  the 
earlier  monastic  orders  had  fallen. 

The  second  and  more  successful  revolt  against  the  claims  of 
Rome,  that  under  Martin  Luther  in  the  sixteenth  century,  was 
followed  by  another  accession  of  feverish  zeal  in  the  Church  itself, 
and  the  enrollment  of  other  levies  to  fight  the  battle  of  the  Church. 
The  Jesuits,  who  sprang  up  to  meet  this  fresh  danger,  were  better 
equipped  to  combat  the  new  ideas  than  were  the  mendicant  friars, 
however  potent  the  latter  may  have  been  for  quelling  those  ill-led 
and  disorganized  bodies,  which  in  the  thirteenth  century  were 
struggling  to  realize  half-understood  aspirations  toward  political 
and  religious  liberty. 

There  occurred,  hovvever,  also  in  the  sixteenth  century,  a  re- 
vival of  the  older  orders,  especially  that  of  St  Francis  d'Assisi, 
in  the  sub-orders  of  the  Capuchins  and  RecoUets ;  and  the  need  felt 
at  the  same  time  for  some  provision  for  the  elementary  education 
of  men  and  women  was  met  by  the  institution  of  the  Christian 
Brothers  and  of  the  Order  of  the  Ursulines,  both  of  whom  ac- 
quired a  firm  footing  in  Canada.  These  supporters  of  traditional 
theology  and  opponents  of  political  progress  would  almost  seem  to 
have  been  called  into  existence  in  obedience  to  some  natural  law,  to 
correct  the  excesses  into  which   unbridled  thought  and -feeling 


FRANCISCANS     AND     JESUITS.  II5 

might  have  carried  mankind  vnider  the  first  exuberant  impulse  of 
freedom.  While  they  may  have  exerted  a  salutary  restraint  on 
the  headlong  pace  of  liberated  Europe,  in  Canada,  during  the 
French  regime,  their  influence  was  such  as  effectually  to  check 
all  movement  towards  freedom  in  thought  or  independence  in 
action. 

The  two  orders  which  first  stamped  their  impress  on  the  his- 
tory of  Quebec  were  the  Franciscans,  in  the  person  of  the  Re- 
collets,  and  the  Jesuits.  Of  all  the  religious  orders,  the  fol- 
lowers of  the  gentle  St.  Francis  might  have  been  expected  to  be 
the  most  active  and  sympathetic  apostles  of  the  gospel  to  the  wild 
tribes  of  the  earth  ;  but  the  constitution  under  which  that  wonder- 
ful organizer,  Ignatius  Loyola,  controlled  the  numerous  highly  in- 
telligent and  zealous  persons  who  flocked  to  his  standard,  made 
less  impracticable  demands  on  one's  conscience  and  mode  of 
life  than  that  of  St.  Francis.  The  rule  of  obedience  was 
more  stringent,  but  that  of  abject  poverty,  collectively  and  indi- 
vidually, was  omitted.  Loyola  had  seen  what  perpetual  strife 
it  had  produced  in  the  Order  of  St.  Francis,  and  he  knew  what 
tremendous  power  resides  in  the  possession  of  wealth.  He  there- 
fore imposed  no  restriction  on  the  tenure  of  property  by  the 
body  as  a  corporation.  We  shall  see  to  what  extent  the  vows 
of  poverty  hampered  the  Recollets,  and  how  ownership  of  vast 
estates  aided  the  Jesuits  in  Canada. 

The  Recollets,  according  to  Le  Clercq — but  this  statement  must 
be  accepted  with  qualifications — belonged  to  one  of  the  strictest 
branches  of  the  Order  of  Friars.  The  saintly  founder  of  the  or- 
der, moved  by  pity  for  the  poor  and  indignation  against  the  rich, 
imposed  on  his  followers  a  vow  of  absolute  poverty  which  forbade 
them  owning  property,  collecting  rents,  or  accepting  alms  in  the 
form  of  coins.  But  even  during  his  lifetime  there  were  murmurs 
against  the  strict  observance  of  this  rule,  and  the  first  general, 
Father  Helie,  did  not  hesitate  to  break  it.  Appeals  were  made 
to  the  Popes  to  permit  a  laxer  interpretation  of  the  Master's  in- 
junction ;  and  not  in  vain,  for  the  rules  of  St.  Francis  were 
modified  by  declarations  of  Popes  Nicholas  TIL,  Clement  V.  and 
Martin  V.     The  latter,  at  the  Chapter  General  of  the  order  in 


Il6  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

1430,  permitted  even  "conventuals"  to  hold  property,  accept  le- 
gacies and  collect  rents.  At  that  date  there  were  two  groups  of 
sub -orders.  There  were  the  Conventuals,  or  those  who  lived  in 
communities  like  other  friars,  owned  their  convent  and  valuable 
propcrtv,  and  allowed  themselves  such  liberties  and  luxuries  as 
the  monks  of  the  period  indulged  in,  and  les  Frcres  Mineurs  de 
VHroite  observance,  who  claimed  to  follow  the  stricter  observance 
of  the  founder's  rules.  The  latter  were  disciples  of  Paulet  de 
Foligni,  who  had  inaugurated  a  reform  movement  against  the 
laxity  of  morals  prevaihng  in  the  large  monasteries.  To  this  group 
belonged  the  Recollets.  They  had  been  introduced  from  Italy  into 
France  in  1592,  under  the  patronage  of  Louis  de  Gonzague,  and 
established  in  the  Convent  of  Xevers.  They  formed  only  one  of 
some  twenty-five  bodies  of  schismatics  in  the  order  itself,  who 
during  the  previous  three  centuries  had  been  led  by  monks  who 
favored  a  return  to  primitive  austerity.  Some  of  these  had  em- 
braced heretical  tenets,  and  were  dealt  with  accordingly.  Others 
were  zealous  for  trifling  changes  in  dress,  such  as  none  but  ec- 
clesiastical fanatics,  with  thoughts  and  aspirations  bounded  by  the 
walls  of  their  monastery,  could  possibly  account  as  of  any  im- 
portance. But  others  of  these  sub-orders  were  composed  of  men 
earnest  in  their  desire  to  live  up  to  the  standards  of  the  founder 
and  to  follow  his  holy  example.  The  Recollets  were  one  of  these. 
Some  of  their  brethren  had  already  carried  the  gospel  into 
South  America  and  into  other  lands,  and  they  were  now  willing 
to  face  the  dangers  of  the  Canadian  forests.  In  Canada  their  influ- 
ence at  first  was  altogether  good :  free  from  all  taint  of  sordid 
motive,  under  vows  of  poverty,  and  forbidden  to  hold  productive 
real  estate,  they  lived  together  only  when  the  fulfilment  of  duty 
required.  They  never  congregated  in  wealthy  or  sumptuous  mon- 
asteries, either  in  Canada  or  elsewhere.  Their  Quebec  house 
was  never  noted  for  such  expensive  or  costly  grounds  as  adorned 
the  College  of  the  Jesuits,  nor.  as  the  records  show,  is  there  a 
single  instance  in  Canada  of  their  owning  real  estate  yielding  any 
revenue.  They  were  the  first  missionaries  to  convert  the  North 
American  Indian,  and  in  those  early  days,  when  the  regular  clergy 
were  few,  and  the  cures  were  missionary  priests,  the  Recollets 


CHAPEL   ERECTED   AT   QUEBEC.  II7 

held  each  his  separate  "cure  of  souls"  in  the  small  isolated  villages 
along  the  St.  Lawrence,  exposed  to  all  the  dangers  of  Iroquois 
attack.  Our  story  will  show  how  they  were  forced  into  the  hack- 
ground  hy  the  more  astute  and  energetic  members  of  the  Jesuit 
order,  but  it  would  be  difficult  to  estimate  the  debt  Canada  owes 
to  them. 

But  to  return  from  this  long  digression.     The  priests,  as  we 
have  seen,  preceded  the  Governor  from  Tadousac  to  Quebec.  Was 
it  a  forecast  of  the  struggle  which  was  to  be  waged  in  the  future 
city  between  the  Church  and  the  State?     Within  the  week  two  of 
the  Recollets  followed  in  Champlain's  company,  but  such  was  the 
haste  of   Father   Le   Caron   to   commence   his   missionary   work 
among  the  Indians,  that  he  did  not  await  the  Governor's  depar- 
ture from  Quebec   for  the  appointed   rendezvous  at  the   Grand 
Sault,  but  started  in  advance.     Champlain  himself  did  not  tarry 
long  at  the  habitation,  where  there  was  not  much  to  attend  to. 
The  trade  centers  were  at  the  mouths  of  the  great  rivers — the 
Saguenay,  the  St.  Maurice  and  the  Ottawa.     But  he  had  to  regu- 
late the  affairs  of  the  post ;  to  set  men  clearing  more  land,  to 
assist  the  good  fathers  in  selecting  a  site  for  their  residence  and 
chapel,  and  afiford  them  what  aid  his  slender  resources  permitted 
towards  the  work  of  construction.     These  earliest  religious  edi- 
fices were  probably  built  near  the  habitation,  and  not  far  from 
the  present  Church  of  Notre  Dame  des  Victoires,.  if  not  upon  its 
site;  for   the    cul-de-sac  now  covered  by  the  Market  Hall  was, 
previous  to  the  erection  of  that  building  in  1855,  a  deep  indenta- 
tion in  the  beach  facing  Champlain  street ;  in  Champlain's  day 
it  was  probably  the  landing  place  and  harbor  for  small  craft.    The 
habitation,  the  Recollet  House  and  the  chapel,  therefore,  stood 
not  far  apart.     The  Father  and  all  hands  worked  wath  such  zeal, 
that  the  chapel  was  sufficiently  completed  to  allow  of  mass  being 
celebrated  by   Father  d'Olbeau  on  June  25th.     Le  Clercq  talks 
grandiloquently  of  salvos  of  artillery  accompanying  the  singing 
of  the  Te  Deum.    No  doubt  rejoicing  was  expressed  by  such  signs 
as  the  few  weary  and  homesick  dwellers  in  the  habitation  could 
invent.     Father  Denis  Jamay,  the  first  commissionnaire,   would 
have  been  the  celebrant,  but  he  had  left  about  the   loth   with 


Il8  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEV'ENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

Champlain  for  the  upper  St.  Lawrence.  Father  d'Olbeau  had  met 
them  at  the  River  des  Prairies,  on  his  way  back  to  Quebec,  to 
provide  himself  with  church  ornaments  and  suppHes  for  the  win- 
ter sojourn  among  the  Hurons,  which  he  had  determined  upon 
imdertaking  despite  Champlain's  warning.  Bent  on  his  purpose 
he  hurried  on  to  Quebec,  and  left  it  again  in  equal  haste,  lest  he 
should  miss  the  Hurons  returning  to  their  bonrgadc  on  the  Geor- 
gian Bay.  Champlain  returned  more  leisurely  to  Quebec  to  make 
final  preparations  for  his  trip  to  the  Huron  country,  and  to  give 
further  instructions  to  the  little  colony. 

It  was  the  4th  of  July,  161 5,  before,  for  the  second  time,  he  left 
the  habitation  in  his  canoe  with  two  men  for  his  eventful  trip 
to  the  Lakes.  Pontgrave  and  Father  Denis,  whom  he  met  on 
their  way  down  the  river,  gave  him  the  unwelcome  news  that  the 
savages,  impatient  of  his  delay,  had  gone  forward.  He  and 
his  friends  when  they  bade  one  another  adieu,  parted,  as  it 
proved,  for  nearly  a  twelvemonth,  for  it  was  the  end  of  the  fol- 
lowing June,  when  his  people  had  given  him  up  for  lost,  before 
Champlain  re-emerged  from  the  forest,  after  an  experience  in 
Indian  warfare  which  should  have  taught  him  how  unreliable 
are  Indian  allies ;  how  valiant  Indian  foes  may  be ;  and  what  ad- 
mirable tacticians  the  savage  warriors  are  when  fighting  in  their 
native  forests.  Had  he  been  willing,  even  then,  to  take  counsel 
from  experience,  the  history  of  Xew  France  would  have  been 
very  different.  L^nfortunately,  his  military  impulses  again  dom- 
inated both  his  mercantile  interests  and  his  political  sagacity. 

Meanwhile  the  infant  colony  was  preserved  from  sinking  into 
barbarism  by  the  presence  of  the  Fathers.  We  get  stray  glimpses 
of  what  was  happening  from  the  records  of  the  Recollets,  whose 
historian.  Father  Sagard,  occasionally  condescends  to  tell  us 
something  of  what  other  people  beside  the  brothers  of  his 
order  were  doing.  If  he  has  not  told  us  more,  we  must  remember 
that,  in  the  view  of  ecclesiastics,  especially  of  the  monastic  orders, 
their  own  self-importance  is  very  prominent,  and  that  matters  ec- 
clesiastical assume  such  magnitude,  that  they  obscure  all  other  in- 
terests, with  the  result  that  their  narratives  are  liable  to  be 
imperfect  and  their  opinions  partial.    Nevertheless  we  should  fare 


A    DISAPPEARANCE    IN    THE    WILDERNESS.  II9 

ill  without  such  contemporary  record  of  the  early  days  of  the 
colony  as  is  given  by  the  Recollet,  Sagard,  or  such  mention  of  the 
more  stirring  episodes  of  its  later  history,  as  is  to  be  found  in  the 
works  of  Hennepin  and  Le  Clercq. 

How  many  ships  anchored  opposite  Quebec,  we  are  not  in- 
formed, nor  when  it  was  that  Pontgrave,  whom  we  last  saw  with 
Father  Denis  sending  Champlain  ofif  with  a  godspeed  on  his  ad- 
venturous foray  to  the  upper  Lakes  with  only  two  Frenchmen, 
dropped  down  to  the  Saguenay,  took  in  his  additional  cargo  of 
peltries,  and  sailed  for  France.  Of  this  we  may  be  sure,  that 
all  this  time  the  hearts  of  the  dwellers  within  the  habitation 
were  dying  within  them,  as  hopes  of  the  return  of  their  leader 
were  being  abandoned.  Winter  had  set  in,  yet  he  and  his  ad- 
venturous companion,  Etienne  Brule,  had  not  returned.  Where 
were  they  in  that  limitless  expanse  of  snow  and  forest,  peopled 
by  red  savages  and  imaginary  demons?  As  inactivity  only  ag- 
gravated anxiety.  Father  d'Olbeau,  who  had  not  been  able  to  carry 
out  his  purpose  of  penetrating  the  Huron  country,  left  with  a 
party  of  Montagnais  on  December  2nd,  intending  to  accompany 
them  on  their  winter's  hunt  and  learn  their  language  and 
customs.  The  Indians  he  could  tolerate,  but  not  the  excruciating 
smoke  of  their  campfires.  It  so  irritated  his  weak  eyes  that  he 
was  obliged  to  return  on  peril  of  permanently  injuring 
his  sight.  Then  on  March  24  occurred  the  death  of  Michel 
Colin,  whose  last  hours  were  cheered  by  the  ministrations 
of  the  clergy.  Of  the  many  unfortunates  who  under  Carticr, 
Roberval  and  Champlain  had  succumbed  to  scurvy  and  other 
diseases,  he  was  the  first  to  be  buried  with  the  rites  of  the 
Church. 

As  passengers  on  the  Spring  fleet  this  year  (1616)  there  came 
some  real  colonists — men  with  their  wives,  intent  on  making  a 
home  in  the  wilderness.  This  interesting  fact  we  glean  incidentally 
from  Father  Sagard,  who  only  mentions  it  in  connection  with  the 
fact  that  on  the  T5th  of  July  Father  d'Olbeau  administered  extreme 
unction  to  Margaret  Vienne,  and  buried  her  with  all  the  ceremony 
of  Holy  Church.  This  is  the  first  indication  that  the  Prince  of 
Conde's  new  company  was  really  attempting  to  fulfil  its  function 


120  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

as  a  colonizer.  Another  instance  of  the  absorption  of  these  good 
fathers  in  themselves  and  in  their  ecclesiastical  interests  is  ex- 
hibited in  the  entire  ignoring  of  Champlain  and  his  important 
proceedings.  We  are  told,  for  example,  that  Father  Le  Caron  left 
the  Huron  village  on  the  Georgian  Bay,  on  the  20th  of  May,  16 16, 
with  the  fleet  of  canoes,  bound  for  the  trading  mart  of  Three 
Rivers,  where  he  arrived  on  July  i  and  met  Father  d'Olbeau,  who 
had  come  up  in  one  of  the  three  ships  to  witness  the  great  gather- 
ing of  the  Indians  assembled  there  for  the  annual  fair.  It  was  of 
small  moment  in  the  estimate  of  the  scribe  that  Champlain. 
Lieutenant  Governor  of  all  New  France,  bore  the  missionaries 
company,  and  that  Father  d'Olbeau  had  come  with  Pontgrave 
himself,  and  that  their  friend  and  master  was  welcomed  as  one 
risen  from  the  dead ;  for  false  reports  of  disaster  circulated  by  the 
Indians  had  greatly  intensified  the  apprehensions  of  the  little 
colony  when  Champlain  failed  to  return  in  the  autumn  of  the 
previous  year. 

A  week  at  Three  Rivers  sufficed  for  barter  and  trade.  On 
the  8th  of  July,  Champlain,  Pontgrave  and  the  two  priests  started 
together,  and  reached  Quebec  on  the  nth,  where  a  service 
of  thanksgiving  was  sung  for  their  safe  return.  Champlain's 
next  occupation  was  to  entertain  with  due  display  and  ceremony 
a  Huron  chief  who  had  descended  the  river  with  him,  and  to 
send  him  back  to  his  countrymen,  who  were  waiting  for  him  at 
the  Sault  St.  Louis,  laden  with  presents  and  properly  impressed, 
as  he  supposed,  with  awe  of  the  French.  The  impression,  as  sub- 
sequent events  proved,  was  not  as  deep  as  might  have  been 
wished.  These  official  acts  performed,  he  planned  an  addition  to 
the  habitation,  to  be  built  of  stone  and  mortar,  for  the  old  wooden 
house  was  hardly  a  fit  abode  for  a  Lieutenant-Governor,  or  for 
the  accommodation  of  his  own  company,  still  less  for  the  enter- 
tainment of  the  strangers  who  from  time  to  time  were  his  guests. 
Then  he  collected  samples  of  wheat,  Indian  corn  and  such  agri- 
cultural products  as  he  could  take  with  him  to  France  as  proof  of 
the  fertility  of  the  soil.  It  must  nevertheless  have  been  with  a 
sigh  that  he  looked  forward  to  leaving,  for  his  garden  was  at  its 
best ;  the  peas  and  beans  were  ripe ;  the  cabbage  swelling,  and  all 


CHAMPLAIN   RETURNS  TO   FRANCE.  121 

nature  was  revelling  in  that  exuberant  life  and  fertility  charac- 
teristic of  the  short  Canadian  summer.  Yet  what  was  there  to 
detain  him  in  Quebec?  The  season's  work  had  been  done.  All 
the  peltries  offered  at  the  Sault  and  at  Three  Rivers  he  had  mon- 
opolized under  the  exclusive  terms  of  the  charter,  and  his  agents 
had  secured  a  share  of  the  business  transacted  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Saguenay.  Yet,  if  there  was  little  work  to  be  done,  there  were 
many  knotty  problems  to  solve,  and  during  these  few  days  long 
and  earnest  discussions  affecting  the  future  of  New  France  were 
held  in  a  council  convened  by  the  monks,  to  which  they  called  the 
Governor  and  six  of  the  most  influential  residents  of  the  little  ham- 
let. The  conversion  of  the  natives  was  of  course  what  the  ec- 
clesiastics had  chiefly  at  heart.  In  devising  plans  for  the  attain- 
ment of  this  end,  the  conclusion  reached  was  that  the  savages 
must  be  civilized  before  they  could  be  Christianized,  and 
that  this  could  be  effected  only  by  intimate  intercourse  with  civil- 
ized men.  But  there  was  only  a  handful  of  corporation  officials  as 
yet  in  this  illimitable  wilderness,  and  they  were  servants  of  a  com- 
pany of  fur  traders  whose  real  interests  were  opposed  to  colo- 
nization, and  most  of  whom  were  heretics.  Persuasion  must 
therefore  be  used  with  the  company's  officers  in  France,  to  induce 
them  to  reverse  their  policy  and  inaugurate  active  colonization. 
If  that  could  not  be  done,  efforts  must  be  made  to  break  down 
the  company's  privilege,  and  have  the  St.  Lawrence  really  thrown 
open  to  the  fur  trade.  Population,  they  believed,  would  inevitably 
follow. 

It  was  a  bold  programme  for  four  poor  monks,  belonging  to 
an  order  sworn  to  poverty,  to  propound,  men  who  could  neither 
individually  nor  collectively  participate  in  the  prosperity  which 
the  sttccess  of  the  scheme  implied.  As  they  were  prepared  to 
make  the  attempt,  however,  it  was  decided  that  the  commissioner. 
Father  Denis  Jamay,  and  Father  Le  Caron,  should  accompany 
the  Governor  to  France.  Both  had  been  eye  witnesses  of  the  needs 
of  the  Indians,  and  Le  Caron  could  relate  his  experience  of  a  win- 
ter's residence  among  them  in  the  very  heart  of  the  continent. 

After  nine  days'  work  and  rest  at  the  habitation,  Champlain 
andr-his  religious  companions  took  boat  and  dropped  down  the 


122  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

river  to  Tadousac,  which  was  virtually  the  head  of  sea  navigation. 
When  he  looked  back  at  Quebec,  he  beheld  the  trading  post  grown 
into  a  village,  though  it  was  still  in  truth  little  else  than  the  depot 
of  a  fur  company.  Still  it  gave  promise  of  what  his  hopes  and 
imagination  had  for  so  many  years  been  picturing  to  his  mind. 
Beside  the  habitation,  now  to  be  extended  so  as  to  accommodate 
a  larger  staff  of  the  company's  servants,  there  was  the  temporary 
monastery  of  the  Recollets  and  their  little  chapel,  and  probably 
some  wooden  shanties  built  of  logs  by  the  newly  arrived  colonists. 
The  bare-foot  monks  stood  on  the  shore,  and  beside  them  those 
still  more  beneficent  harbingers  of  civilization,  the  wives  and 
children  of  the  colonists.  They  must  have  been  very  sad  and  full 
of  foreboding,  for  only  the  evening  before  they  had  laid  to  rest 
poor  Margaret  Vienne,  who  probably  was  not  the  only  woman 
who  had  that  summer  accompanied  her  husband  in  the  com- 
pany's ship  with  sanguine  expectations  of  prosperity  in  the 
New  World.  The  veil  is  now  drawn  for  another  long  winter 
over  the  little  group  of  men  and  women  composing  the  inhabitants 
of  Quebec.  The  hamlet  was  small,  it  is  true,  yet  there  was  more 
interest  in  life  than  heretofore.  Father  d'Olbeau  and  that  charm- 
ing lay  brother,  Du  Plessis,  a  scholar  and  a  man  of  strong  sense 
and  sound  mother  wit,  as  his  subsequent  actions  proved,  were 
there.  Their  religious  services  broke  delightfully  into  the  mono- 
tony of  the  daily  routine  of  snow  shovelling  and  firewood  cutting, 
and  their  sermons  gave  many  a  subject  for  hot  discussion  among 
the  servants  of  the  company,  not  a  few  of  whom  were  at  that 
period  still  Huguenots.  Father  Le  Clercq,  indeed,  tells  us  that  tiie 
ridicule  these  cast  on  the  mysteries  of  the  Church  retarded  not  a 
little  the  progress  of  missionary  work  among  the  Indians. 
Material  considerations,  however,  began  to  be  uppermost  in  men's 
thoughts,  for,  before  the  close  of  the  winter,  provisions  for  the  in- 
creased number  of  mouths  were  running  short. 

While  the  colonists  were  starving  in  Quebec,  the  good  fathers 
in  France  were  pleading,  with  scant  encouragement,  for  their 
flock.  The  ofificials  of  the  company  were  glad  enough  to  listen 
to  Father  Joseph's  account  of  the  great  interior,  and  of  its  re- 
sources in  furs  and  of  its  hordes  of  savage  hunters;  but  they 


OFFICIAL    INDIFFERENCE.  I23 

were  probably  as  averse  to  ruining  their  commercial  prospects 
by  the  encouragement  of  farming  and  competition  in  trade  as 
was  the  Hudson  Bay  Company,  long  afterwards,  to  Lord 
Selkirk's  magnificent  plans  for  peopling  the  Red  River  valley. 
Besides  which,  if  we  accept  as  true  the  accounts  of  the  Recollet 
historians,  that  Huguenot  influence  and  Huguenot  money  still 
supported  the  company,  there  was  cause  for  hesitation,  as  the  for- 
tunes of  the  Reformers,  as  a  party  in  the  State,  had  just  then 
reached  a  very  critical  point.  In  this  very  year  of  i6l6,  the  Roman 
Catholic  clergy  had  recovered  power  sufficient  to  secure  the  resti- 
tution of  the  Church  property  in  Beam.  This  inevitably  presaged 
the  breaking  out  of  another  religious  war ;  and  every  far-seeing 
Huguenot  (and  commercial  men  are  generally  good  prophets) 
must  have  dreaded  the  result,  for  the  forces  marshalling  against 
Reform  and  its  inseparable  ally,  Republicanism,  were  becoming 
every  day  stronger  and  more  compact. 

H  the  company  declined  to  act,  the  Government  was  cer- 
tainly not  in  a  condition  to  aid  the  Recollets  in  carrying  out 
their  broadly  conceived  scheme  of  evangelization  and  colonization. 
A  weak  King,  Louis  XHL,  had  but  recently  gained  his  majority 
after  a  regency,  under  Marie  de  Medici  and  her  venal  Italian 
servants,  which  had  done  little  for  the  glory  of  France.  At  this 
moment  the  boy  King,  only  sixteen  years  old,  was  under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  clever  young  sycophant,  de  Luynes,  who  was  plot- 
ting the  banishment  of  the  Queen  Mother  and  the  death  of  her 
favorite.  All  his  sinister  plans  were  accomplished  before  the  year 
closed.  With  the  King's  connivance  the  Marechal  d'Ancre,  ne 
Concini,  was  assassinated  on  the  Pont  du  Louvre.  His  wife,  the 
Marechale  Leonora  Galigai,  the  Queen's  former  maid  of  honor, 
was  beheaded  on  the  fictitious  charge  of  witchcraft.  The  Queen 
was  obliged  to  retire  to  the  Chateau  of  Blois,  and  her  counsellor, 
the  Bishop  of  Luzon,  had  perforce  to  follow  her.  He  who  sub- 
sequently figured  in  history,  and  in  Canadian  story,  as  Cardinal 
Richelieu  had  as  definite,  though  not  as  correct,  conceptions  of  a 
colonial  policy  as  the  Recollet  Friars,  and  not  so  many  years 
afterward  he  was  able  to  carry  them  out  with  decision.  The  only 
motive  which  prompted  those  in  power  was  ignoble,  sordid  selfish- 


124  QUEBEC   IN    THE  SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

ness;  while,  amongst  the  leaders  of  the  Reformed  church,  the 
pristine  simplicity  and  fervor  of  sincere  religion  had  been  con- 
taminated by  the  intermixture  of  political  aspirations.  The  reli- 
gious historians  of  Canada  attribute  the  reluctance  to  give  active 
aid  to  the  work  of  colonization  and  of  the  evangelization  of  the 
Indians  to  the  selfishness  of  the  company  and  the  religious  an- 
tagonism of  its  Huguenot  members.  Champlain,  with  fuller 
knowledge  and  greater  candor,  assigns  it  to  the  state  of  dis- 
organization which  prevailed  in  the  Government.  The  Lieutenant 
Governor  of  New  France,  Charles  de  Bourbon,  Prince  of  Conde, 
who  had  opposed  the  Queen  Regent  and  her  favorite,  had  been 
imprisoned,  but  Champlain  believed  that  the  Company  was 
the  real  object  of  their  hostility.  "The  head  being  sick,"  as  he 
expressed  it,  "the  members  could  not  enjoy  good  health."  Mons. 
le  Prince,  the  head  of  the  company,  though  natural  brother  of 
Henry  IV.,  had  not  been  above  selling  the  revenues  of  the  Abbey 
of  ^larmontier  to  the  deformed  brother-in-law  of  Concini,  Eti- 
enne  Galigai,  who  was  now  in  prison.  Ambiguous  negotiations 
seem  to  have  been  carried  on  through  an  intermediary  as  to  the 
terms  on  which  Monsieur  le  ]\Iarechal  de  Theminis  should  tem- 
porarily fill  his  place  till  released.  [Meanwhile  remonstrances  were 
made  to  the  authorities  against  the  laxity  of  the  company  in  ful- 
filling its  obligations  in  the  matter  of  colonization.  Champlain  ad- 
mits that  some  of  the  members  were  ready  to  amend  their  short- 
comings, and  that  to  that  end  his  old  friend  de  ^Monts,  who  was 
evidently  still  active  and  interested  in  the  management,  and  more 
broadminded  than  his  partners,  drew  up  a  series  of  articles 
obliging  the  company  to  increase  the  number  of  settlers,  to  supply 
means  of  defense,  and  to  provide  settlers  with  provisions  for  two 
years  while  they  were  learning  to  be  self-supporting.  "These  ar- 
ticles," adds  Champlain.  "were  handed  to  IMons.  de  Merillac  to  be 
laid  before  the  Council.  Though  the  project  was  well  conceived, 
it  came  to  naught.  All  went  up  in  smoke — why  and  wherefore 
we  know  not."  And  when  he  was  just  about  to  sail  a  scoundrel 
called  Boyer  produced  an  act  of  the  Parliament  of  Rouen,  denying 
his  right  to  act  as  Lieutenant  of  the  Prince.  The  most  antago- 
nistic influence  to  the  company's  financial  prosperity,  and  hence 


A    REAL    SETTLER.  125 

to  the  colony's  progress,  would  seem  to  have  been,  not  the 
religious  prejudices  of  the  shareholders,  but  discord  within  the 
company  and  jealousy  by  competitive  traders  of  the  company's 
exclusive  privileges. 

But  to  return  to  1616.  So  inopportune  was  the  moment  to  in- 
augurate a  great  colonial  movement  and  a  generous  missionary 
effort,  that  but  little  heed  was  paid  to  the  appeal  of  Father  Le 
Caron  in  the  interest  of  the  benighted  red  men.  His  own  zeal  was 
not  dampened  by  disappointment,  though  his  superior,  Father 
Jamay,  did  not  at  once  return  to  Canada.  A  substitute  was,  never- 
theless, forthcoming  in  the  person  of  Father  Paul  Huet.  Cham- 
plain  seconded  vigorously,  as  we  have  seen,  the  efforts  of  the 
Friars  in  this  winter  of  1616-1617  in  favor  of  an  active  immigra- 
tion movement,  perhaps  not  altogether  without  effect,  for  Capt. 
Morrel's  good  ship,  which  carried  him  and  the  RecoUet  mission- 
aries, through  storm  and  ice,  after  a  long  passage  of  thirteen 
weeks  and  one  day,  to  Tadousac,  took  out  as  passengers  the 
family  of  the  Sieur  Hebert,  consisting  of  his  wife,  two  daughters 
and  a  little  boy.  The  Sieur  Hebert  became  the  most  notable  private 
citizen  of  Quebec,  and,  as  the  association  feared,  a  troublesome 
business  competitor. 

Father  Sagard  tells  us  that  the  Hebert  household  came  out  with 
the  intention  of  living  in  Canada,  and  persisted  in  living  there 
despite  the  opposition  of  the  old  mercantile  company,  wdiich  sub- 
jected the  family  to  every  hardship  possible,  hoping  either  to 
force  them  to  leave  the  country  in  disgust,  or  to  reduce  them  to 
the  condition  of  mere  servants  and  even  slaves.  "By  such  cru- 
elties." the  good  Father  adds,  "are  the  poor  prevented  from  en- 
joying the  fruits  of  their  labor !  Oh  God !  how  the  big  fish 
devour  the  little  ones."  The  Sieur  Hebert's  daughter,  Ann,  made 
her  name  memorable  by  marrying  Etienne  Jonquet  Normand. 
Though  she  had  lost  no  time  in  selecting  a  husband,  she  con- 
siderately postponed  the  wedding  till  the  ships  sailed  away. 
They  carried  Father  d'Olbeau,  and  thus  the  celebration  of 
the  first  marriage  by  the  rites  of  the  Church  in  Canada  fell  to 
the  lot  of  Father  Joseph.  Occasions  and  excuses  for  merry- 
making were   rare  enough,  and   doubtless   it  was  a  subject   for 


126.  QUEBEC  IN   THE  SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

public  congratulation  that  the  festivities  were  delayed  till  the 
bustle  of  the  departing  ship  had  subsided,  and  the  community 
was  thrown  upon  itself  for  amusement.  The  summer,  indeed,  had 
been  a  very  wretched  one.  The  crops,  over  which  Champlain 
went  into  ecstasies  the  previous  autunni,  may  have  been  very 
luxuriant,  but  certainly  they  were  not  abundant,  for  when  Capt. 
Morrel  arrived  at  Quebec  late  in  Jmie,  he  found  its  fifty  or  sixty 
people  starving.  He  parted  with  all  he  could  spare — a  single  small 
barrel  of  pork.  His  own  stores  had  been  unduly  depleted  through 
his  extraordinarily  long  voyage.  The  increase  of  twenty  in  the 
number  of  inhabitants  over  the  last  enumeration  must  have  been 
due  to  the  families  who  had  arrived  that  season,  and  the  previous 
one.  The  old  inhabitants  had  been  unmarried  servants  of  the 
trading  company,  and  adventurers.  They  were  driven  to  culti- 
vate Champlain's  garden  in  order  to  raise  small  crops  as  proofs  of 
the  land's  productiveness,  but  evidently  they  considered  steady 
agricultural  labor  as  a  hardship.  Henceforth  there  was  to  be 
some  real  farming  in  the  valley  of  the  St.  Lawrence. 

Champlain  passes  over  the  summer  almost  in  silence,  merely 
remarking  in  his  edition  of  1632  that  nothing  worth  mentioning 
had  happened.  The  Indians  who  had  promised  to  meet  him  and 
accompany  him  into  the  interior  had  failed  to  keep  their  promise. 
The  reason  of  their  reluctance  was  probably  dread  of  punishment 
for  the  murder  of  two  Frenchmen  in  the  preceding  autumn,  a 
crime,  however,  which  had  not  then  been  discovered.  The  two  un- 
fortunates were  shooting  on  the  Beauport  Flats  when  attacked 
and  killed  by  two  Montagnais  in  revenge  for  some  real  or  su])- 
posed  injury.  The  murderers  sank  the  bodies  in  the  river,  and  the 
deed  remained  a  secret  for  nearly  eighteen  months.  But  the  In- 
dians, naturall}'  suspicious  and  superstitious,  doubted  the  ignor- 
ance of  the  French,  and  dreaded  the  infliction  of  some  mysterious 
form  of  revenge.  The  season  had  not  been  memorable  for  any 
adventure  or  exploration  of  Champlain's  own,  and  he  would  prob- 
ably fain  forget,  and  was  loath  to  record,  the  misery  which  the 
little  colony  sufifered  from  famine  and  the  short  rations  of  the 
previous  spring,  and  the  sickness,  called  by  him  ami  dc  la  terre, 
which  followed  the  famine. 


FACTION  AND  RIVALRY.  12/ 

Father  d'Olbeau,  who  accompanied  him  to  France  in  the  au- 
tumn of  1617,  to  try  his  powers  of  persuasion,  succeeded  no 
better  than  Father  Joseph  had  done  in  the  previous  winter.  The 
shareholders  were  no  more  disposed  to  run  needless  risks  than 
they  had  been  the  previous  year.  Faction  and  selfishness  were 
rampant  throughout  the  kingdom,  and  the  agitation  among  the 
Huguenots,  already  active  in  the  previous  year,  was  now  gather- 
ing force  and  was  about  to  break  forth  into  revolt.  Father 
d'Olbeau,  who  had  been  nominated  commissionnaire,  persuaded 
Father  Modeste  Guines  to  return  with  him  in  the  spring  of  1618. 
There  were  therefore  in  the  spring  of  16 18  four  Recollet  friars 
and  one  lay  brother  in  Canada.  Champlain  was  as  unsuccessful 
during  the  winter  of  1617-1618  as  his  religious  collaborators  in 
awakening  ardor  in  the  company  or  in  the  general  public.  The 
pettiest  possible  quarrels  distracted  the  associates.  The  Prince 
de  Conde  was  still  in  prison.  His  substitute,  the  Sieur  de 
Theminis,  obtained  an  Order  in  Council  requiring  the  com- 
pany to  pay  over  to  him  the  salary  attached  to  the  office. 
The  Prince  protested.  The  company,  not  unreasonably  ob- 
jecting to  pay  the  salary  twice,  suggested  as  a  compromise  that 
the  amount  be  given  to  the  Recollets  as  a  contribution  towards 
building  their  seminary  in  Canada.  Neither  of  the  claimants, 
however,  was  charitably  inclined.  Meanwhile  public  opposition 
to  the  company  had  become  strenuous.  The  estates  of  Brittany 
declared  the  trade  of  the  St.  Lawrence  open  to  all  Bretons,  an  act 
which  the  Parliament  of  Paris  inadvertently  confirmed.  It  re- 
quired a  vigorous  effort  on  the  part  of  Champlain  and  the  Rouen 
shareholders  to  secure  its  repeal.  He  warned  his  employers  that 
if  they  confined  their  operations  to  the  fur  trade  alone,  and  made 
no  effort  to  render  the  colony  self-sustaining  through  agri- 
culture, their  tenure  of  life,  in  a  business  sense,  would  inevitably 
be  short.  He  was  met  by  the  not  unreasonable  argument  that 
their  commercial  privileges  were  liable  to  cancellation  without 
notice,  and  that  the  very  settlers,  wdiom  it  would  cost  much 
to  install,  and  still  more  to  support  till  self-support  became  pos- 
sible, would  themselves  immediately  become  traders  and  meddle 
between  the  company  and  the  Indians.     Champlain's  entreaties 


128  QUEBEC    IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

wrung  promises,  Init  promises  only,  from  the  association.  Yet 
he  was  encouraged,  when  returning  to  Quebec  in  the  spring  of 
i6i8  in  his  old  friend  Pontgrave's  ship,  by  the  presence  of  the 
Sicur  de  la  Mothe  as  fellow  passenger.  De  la  Mothe  was  a 
man  of  character.  He  had  gone  with  the  Jesuits  to  L'Acadie; 
had  been  carried  oft  to  Virginia  by  Argall ;  was  sent  thence  a 
prisoner  to  England ;  liberated  and  restored  to  his  native  land ; 
and  was  willing  again  to  risk  shipwreck  and  capture  in  the  New 
World.  If  a  good  impression  could  be  made  on  such  a  man,  surely 
his  report  would  excite  some  interest  in  France  on  his  return. 
Champlain  could  not  yet  bring  out  his  young  wife,  but  her  brother, 
Eustache  Boulle,  a  youth  of  eighteen  years  of  age,  bore  him 
company. 

On  arrival  disquieting  news  met  him  at  Tadousac :  the 
colony  had  just  escaped  annihilation  by  an  Indian  massacre.  The 
dread  of  discovery  felt  by  the  murderers  of  the  two  sportsmen  on 
the  Beauport  Flats  in  the  autumn  of  1616  hung  over  the  Indians 
like  a  nightmare  ;  and.  with  the  savage  disregard  of  ultimate  conse- 
quences, it  was  decided  to  fall  on  the  little  colony  and  exterminate 
it,  thus  executing  the  executioner.  There  is  no  proof  that  the 
remains  of  the  murdered  men  had  yet  been  found.  They  were 
supposed  to  have  been  drowned  by  the  upsetting  of  their  canoe. 
With  a  view  to  relieving  the  tension  eight  hundred  Montaignais 
Indians  assembled  at  Three  Rivers ;  but,  while  they  were  de- 
liberating how  best  to  wreak  vengeance  on  their  former  allies, 
one  of  the  chiefs  known  as  La  Foriere.  moved  by  motives  which 
are  not  very  intelligible,  descended  to  Quebec  and  revealed  the 
whole  plot  to  Beauchasse,  the  company's  factor  and  clerk.  La 
Foriere  then  became  mediator  between  the  Indians  and  the  colo- 
nists. A  safe  conduct  was  promised  to  the  Indian  chiefs,  if  they 
would  visit  the  habitation.  They  came.  The  first  proposal  made 
by  them  was  to  commute  the  punishment  by  a  present  of  furs, 
according  to  Indian  custom.  This  seemed  to  Beauchasse,  from 
a  business  point  of  view,  in  every  way  a  profitable  mode  of 
settlement.  The  two  missionaries,  on  the  contrary,  Le  Caron  and 
Huet,  with  a  better  knowledge  of  Indian  character,  pointed  out 
that,  once  the  principle  was  admitted  that  the  value  of  a  French- 


AN    INDIAN    CONSPIRACY.  129 

man's  life  was  to  he  computed  by  so  many  beaver  skins,  no 
Frenchman's  life  would  he  safe.  The  missionaries  were  right, 
and  their  advice  prevailed :  a  peremptory  demand  was  made  for 
the  surrender  of  the  two  murderers. 

Indians  to  our  own  day  can  always  secure  the  apprehension 
or  the  death  of  any  guilty  member  of  their  tribe,  if  the  common- 
weal demands  it.  In  this  case  one  of  the  murderers,  after  adorn- 
ing himself  with  all  his  finery,  voluntarily  entered  the  fort  with  his 
father  and  some  of  the  chiefs.  The  drawbridge  was  raised  and 
every  precaution  taken  against  an  attack  by  the  hordes  of  savages 
surrounding  the  Jiahitation.  Beauchasse,  who  was  able  by  this 
time  to  speak  in  Algonquin,  addressed  the  Indians,  pointing  out 
the  benefit  the  friendship  of  the  French  had  been  to  them,  and 
would  continue  to  be,  and  the  enormity  of  the  crime  which  had 
been  committed.  The  faltering  speech  dragged  till  the  patience 
of  the  accused  was  thoroughly  exhausted,  and  he  told  them  that 
he  was  an  Indian  and  not  afraid  to  die,  and  begged  that 
the  factor,  Beauchasse,  would  despatch  him  with  as  little  formality 
as  possible.  It  had  to  be  explained  that,  whatever  might  be  his 
fate,  such  summary  condemnation  and  execution  were  opposed  to 
French  procedure.  In  fact  neither  side  was  prepared  to  carry 
matters  to  extremes.  The  Indians  might  have  succeeded  had  they 
surprised  the  French,  but  they  knew  full  well  they  could  not 
withstand  firearms  behind  the  entrenched  and  stockaded  fort. 
They  were  starving,  and  were  forced  to  solicit  food  from  the  very 
white  men  whose  death  they  had  been  plotting.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  policy  of  the  French  trading  company  had  been  to 
propitiate  the  Algonquin  tribes  and  the  Huron  branch  of  the  Iro- 
quois. The  execution  of  the  murderers  would  excite  the  utmost 
rage  and  originate  a  war  of  revenge,  which  the  company  was  ut- 
terly unable  to  sustain.  It  would  simply  ruin  trade  by  closing 
its  sources  and  channels.  It  was  wisely  decided,  therefore,  to  ask 
for  hostages  in  the  persons  of  two  children,  and  to  postpone 
the  trial  and  sentence  until  Champlain  should  arrive  m  the 
spring.  The  hostages  were  given.  The  Recollet  fathers  soon 
found  they  had  their  hands  full  in  taking  care  of  the  little  urchins. 
Both  were  quick  at  learning,  and  one  was  reasonably  tractable,  but 


130  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

as  soon  as  opportunity  offered  they  escaped  back  to  their  wild  life. 
Thus  happily  ended  the  first  Indian  rising  against  the  whites  in  the 
forests  of  North  America.  The  peril  had  been  great,  and  the 
anxiety  of  the  fifty  or  sixty  "habitants,"  crowded  for  safety  into 
the  habitation,  the  only  defensible  building,  must  have  been  op- 
pressive. Had  it  not  l)een  for  the  wise  yet  firm  counsel  given  by 
the  fathers,  the  immetliate  and  remote  consequences  would  have 
been  disastrous. 

Brother  du  Plessis,  who  was  in  charge  of  the  mission 
at  Three  Rivers  when  the  conspiracy  was  hatched,  had  de- 
scended to  Quebec  to  aid  in  the  pacification  of  his  savage 
flock.  When  therefore  Champlain  arrived  at  the  habitation  on 
the  1st  of  June  with  De  La  Mothe,  Captain  Pontgrave,  a  clerk 
called  Loquin  who  had  come  out  to  assist  Beauchasse,  and 
Fathers  d'Olbeau  and  Guines,  all  the  Recollet  missionaries  in 
Canada  met  him  at  Quebec.  The  welcome  was  doubly  hearty, 
for,  to  add  to  the  anxiety  of  the  colony,  the  spring  ships  were 
late.  The  smaller  ship  had  made  a  good  passage,  but  she  un- 
fortunately was  so  scantily  provisioned  that  the  crew  had  been 
on  short  rations,  and  she  could  therefore  spare  nothing  to  the 
famished  inhabitants,  who  had  given  more  than  they  could  spare 
to  propitiate  the  Indians  during  and  subsequent  to  the  critical 
negotiations.  They  had  emptied  the  store-house,  gathered  the 
last  of  the  season's  mushrooms,  and  rooted  up  from  the  garden 
what  vegetables  had  survived  the  winter.  Day  by  day  had  they 
looked  down  the  river  with  growing  despair  for  the  approach- 
ing ship  with  Pontgrave  and  Champlain  and  his  stores  of  good 
things.  At  last  it  hove  in  sight  and  tlie  situation  was  materially 
relieved. 

After  a  short  stay  at  the  habitation,  where  Champlain  was 
greatly  delighted  with  the  fertility  of  the  soil  and  the  luxuriance 
of  the  vegetation,  but  deplored  the  indolence  and  indifference  of 
the  settlers,  who,  amid  potential  plenty,  would  starve  rather  than 
work,  he  hurried  to  Three  Rivers  to  decide  the  fate  of  the  mur- 
derers. There  was  the  usual  ceremonious  council.  His  assistance 
was  asked  by  the  Indians  against  their  enemies.  He  charged  them 
with  breach  of  promise  in  not  meeting  him  the  year  before; 


COUREURS    DE    BOIS.  I3I 

declined  to  accompany  them  at  once  owing  to  the  heinous  crime 
committed  by  members  of  their  tribe;  but  promised,  on  condi- 
tion of  their  good  behavior  and  of  their  trade,  to  join  them  the 
following  year.  Finally,  seizing  a  sword,  he  flung  it  into  the  St. 
Lawrence,  and  as  its  waters  closed  over  the  weapon  and  concealed 
it  for  ever  and  for  aye,  assured  them  that  so  would  all  ill-will  be- 
tween the  French  and  their  allies  be  obliterated  and  forgotten — 
even  to  the  crime  which  might  so  justly  have  been  punished  by 
death.  With  this  fine  dramatic  flourish  he  liberated  the  prisoners. 
The  Indians  were  too  polite  to  laugh. 

With  the  Indians  there  came  to  the  fair  at  Three  Rivers  the 
progenitors  of  a  class  of  men  who  did  more  than  French 
soldiers  or  statesmen  to  extend  French  influence  over  the 
vast  West  and  Northwest — the  courcurs  de  hois.  Etienne  Brule 
had,  more  than  three  years  before,  been  sent  by  Champlain  with 
twelve  Indians  from  Lake  Simcoe,  when  he  was  on  his  unsuccess- 
ful campaign  against  the  Iroquois,  to  urge  his  allies  to  hasten  their 
arrival  at  the  trysting  place.  After  waiting  beyond  the  appointed 
time,  Champlain  left,  and,  from  that  day  forward,  nothing  had 
been  heard  of  Brule.  He  could  have  told  a  thrilling  tale  of  adven- 
ture among  the  Iroquois  and  the  Hurons ;  yet  he  was  in  no  haste 
to  return  to  civilization.  He  had  learned  the  Huron  language,  he 
had  acquired  the  Indian  habits,  and,  though  Champlain  does  not 
expressly  say  so,  had  married  an  Indian  wife.  He  would  not  stay 
among  his  countrymen,  but  returned  with  the  Hurons  as  an  adopt- 
ed member  of  the  tribe  to  further  explore  the  Western  country. 
From  Champlain's  account,  he  seems  to  have  forestalled  La  Salle 
in  the  discovery  of  the  Mississippi.  Parkman  supposes  it  to  have 
been  the  Susquehanna,  as  Brule  spent  one  winter  in  visiting 
the  nations  adjacent  to  the  Huron  territory,  and  in  traveling 
along  a  river  which  flows  into  the  sea  near  Florida.  He  de- 
scended the  river  as  far  as  the  sea  and  speaks  of  the  mild  climate 
of  the  country  and  the  wild  animals  ranging  over  it  in  great 
numbers.  He  ultimately  met  an  Indian's  fate  in  a  violent 
death  in  1632  at  the  hands  of  a  Huron.  The  readiness  with 
which  the  French  adapted  themselves  to  Indian  ways  of  life  is 
a  trait  not  exhibited  by  any  other  of  the  European  nations  which 


132  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEV^ENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

have  colonized  tlie  Western  hemisphere.  There  seemed  to  be 
elements  peculiarly  congenial  to  the  French  taste  in  the  wild, 
untrammelled  habits  of  the  forest  hunters  of  North  America. 
The  Frencbman's  love  of  adventure  was  gratified,  his  native 
activity  of  mind  and  body  found  full  scope  for  exercise,  and  in 
the  woods  he  was  far  away  from  the  Priest  and  the  Intendant. 
Though  excommunications  were  fulminated  against  the  courcurs 
de  hois  by  the  Church,  and  edicts  and  ordinances  and  sentences 
of  punishment  by  death  itself,  in  case  of  disobedience,  passed  by 
the  Council,  these  progenitors  of  the  half-breed  of  the  West 
increased  and  multiplied.  In  trying  to  repress  them  the 
French  Government  acted  inconsistently  with  its  avowed  prin- 
ciples ;  for  the  conviction  that  the  higher  civilization  can  as- 
similate the  lower  was  then,  and  still  is,  a  fundamental  principle 
of  French  colonial  policy.  It  has  never  been  propovmded,  or  be- 
lieved to  be  practicable,  by  any  experienced  English  colonists. 

The  danger  of  an  Indian  outbreak  having  been  averted,  and  a 
profitable  trade  in  furs  secured  as  the  result  of  his  clemency, 
Champlain  returned  to  Quebec,  but  tarried  only  while  Pontgrave 
made  a  trip  to  Tadousac  for  provisions  for  the  winter  sup- 
port of  the  little  community.  Then  he,  Father  Paul  and 
Brother  Pacifique  set  sail  for  France.  They  left  Tadousac  on 
the  30th  of  July,  and  landed  at  Honfleur  on  the  28th  of  August, 
1618.  Monsieur  de  la  Mothe  remained  in  Canada,  but  no  men- 
tion is  made  of  other  accessions  to  the  population,  except  the 
clerk,  Loquin.  One  death  only  is  recorded,  despite  the  failure  of 
stores  in  the  early  summer.  The  victim  was  a  Scotch  Presby- 
terian, who  wanted  to  be  allowed  to  die  in  peace,  but  the  good 
fathers,  on  his  refusing  their  ministrations,  consigned  the  poor 
soul  to  the  hands  Of  Satan,  "who  hurried  him  ofif  to  the  very  low- 
est depths  of  hell."  Ere  long  there  were  to  be  no  more  heretics  in 
this  holy  land,  and  therefore  no  further  need  for  such  painful  ex- 
tremities of  spiritual  jurisdiction.  In  this  incident  we  meet  for 
the  first  time  the  gentle  influence  of  woman's  charity  in  New 
France.  It  was  Madame  Ilebert  who  tended  the  unfortunate 
Scotchman,  so  far  from  home  and  from  congenial  surroundings, 


A    MONASTIC    ANNALIST.  I33 

and  it  was  she  whose  sohcitude  about  his  soul  was  so  urgent  that 
she  called  in  the  clergy  to  effect  his  conversion. 

These  glimpses  of  life  under  the  cliff  are  given  by  the  Recollet 
Father  Sagard.  He  was  not  himself  sent  to  Canada — to  his 
great  regret — until  1623;  but  such  matters  were  still  fresh  in 
men's  memory,  as  well  as  accessible  in  the  records  of  the 
order.  While  he  is  garrulous  about  trifles,  he  is  silent,  and 
significantly  silent — one  cannot  but  suppose — about  more  mo- 
mentous events,  especially  when  Champlain  himself  is  concerned. 
While  Champlain  makes  constant  reference  to  the  Friars,  to 
their  comings  and  goings  and  doings,  he  is  treated  by  them 
with  contemptuous  silence.  The  inference  is  that  he  disapproved 
of  their  conduct  as  being  injurious  to  the  interests  of  the  com- 
pany and  of  New  France,  or  else  that  his  religious  opinions  were 
not  rigid  enough  to  please  them.  They  were  not  combative  like 
their  successors  and  future  rivals,  the  Jesuits.  If  they  disapprov- 
ed, they  simply  expressed  dissent  by  silence.  But  in  this  antagon- 
ism and  jealousy,  overt  or  latent,  we  detect  already,  what  was 
destined  to  be  the  bane  of  French  colonial  rule  in  America,  ec- 
clesiastical influence  at  war  with  the  civil  power, 


CHAPTER  VII. 

Champlain  as  Governor  Under  the  Due  de  Montmorency 

and  the  Creation  of  the  De  Caen  Trading 

Company.      J  6 19- J  624. 

We  now  enter  on  another  phase  of  the  colony's  existence  and 
the  company's  history.  Champlain,  as  representative  of  both,  is 
distracted  in  trying  to  adjust  his  conduct  as  manager  of  a  mer- 
cantile association  with  his  sense  of  duty  as  Governor  of  the 
colony.  And  unfortunately  at  this  juncture  the  course  of  events 
cannot  be  as  distinctly  traced  as  heretofore,  inasmuch  as  there  is 
internal  evidence  that  the  1632  edition  of  Champlain's  work  was 
revised  and  altered  by  some  other  hand  than  his  own.  The  "Voy- 
age jusque  a  la  fin  de  I'Annee,  1618,"  published  in  1619,  is  as  it 
came  from  Champlain's  pen,  and  therefore  doubtful  points  in  the 
edition  of  1632  up  to  that  date  can  be  verified  by  reference  to  the 
narrative  published  in  1619.  For  events  subsequent  to  1619  we 
are  dependent  on  the  edition  of  1632.  As  I'Abbe  Laverdiere  points 
out  in  his  preface  to  the  edition  of  1632,  the  discrepancies  in  the 
two  narratives  so  often  and  so  pointedly  indicate  a  hand  hostile  to 
the  Recollet  Fathers,  that  the  inference  is  that  the  editor  was  a 
Jesuit.  Father  Sagard's  "Histoire  de  Canada"  appeared  in  1634 — 
two  years  after  Champlain's  edition  of  1632,  and  one  year  before 
Champlain's  death.  Irritation  at  the  slight  thrown  on  his  Order 
in  Champlain's  last  narrative  may  account  for  his  obscuration 
of  Champlain  in  his  own  history.  As  Champlain  was  in  France, 
or  a  captive  in  England,  from  1629  to  1632,  when  he  re- 
turned to  Quebec,  it  is  difficult  to  understand  why  the  edition 
of  1632  should  not  have  been  put  through  the  press  by  him- 
self; and  yet  there  are  in  it  palpable  errors  which  it  is  in- 
credible that  he  should  have  committed.  For  instance,  the  edition 
of  1619  tells  us  that  in  the  autumn  of  1616,  just  before  sailing, 
he    planned    an    extension    of    the     habitation,    and     "had     it 


DIVERGENT      VIEWS.  I35 

all  built  of  lime  and  sand,  having  found  material  of  excellent 
quality  near  the  habitation,  which  is  a  great  convenience  in  build- 
ing to  those  who  are  willing  to  take  the  trouble  of  carrying  and 
using  it."  The  passage  is  omitted  entirely  in  the  edition  of  1632 ; 
but  this  edition  interpolates  in  the  narrative  of  what  occurred 
in  1 61 8  a  document,  sworn  to  before  a  notary,  which  enumerates 
the  articles  the  association  binds  itself  to  send  to  the  colony. 
Among  these  are  "ten  hogsheads  of  lime,  necessary,  inasmuch 
as  none  had  up  to  that  time  been  found  in  the  country,  though 
it  has  since  been  discovered."  It  is  simply  incredible  that  Cham- 
plain  could  have  so  contradicted  himself  in  a  matter  of  com- 
mon everyday  knowledge.  We  are  thus  driven  to  conclude  that 
the  edition  of  1632,  while  composed  in  the  main  from  materials 
he  supplied,  was  not  entirely  written  by  him,  was  not  corrected 
by  himself,  and  that  it  cannot  therefore  be  wholly  depended  on  as 
expressing  his  opinions.  While  this  is  probably  true,  it  may  also 
have  happened  that  his  sentiments,  under  Jesuit  influences,  may 
have  actually  changed  towards  the  RecoUets,  and  that  the  omis- 
sions in  the  edition  of  1632,  regarding  the  work  of  the  Recollet 
Fathers,  were  really  due  to  himself.  Champlain  was  growing  old  : 
he  was  born  in  1567.  IT  such  a  change  of  sentiment  on  Cham- 
plain's  part  actually  occurred,  Sagard  has  taken  revenge  by  sup- 
pressing as  far  as  possible  all  mention  of  him  in  his  "Histoire." 

No  sooner  had  Champlain  set  foot  in  France  in  August,  1618, 
than  he  recommenced  his  advocacy  of  a  more  vigorous  colonial 
policy.  He  claims  to  have  wrung  from  the  association  a  promise 
sworn  to  before  a  notary  in  December,  1619  (the  date  being 
old  style,  as  the  document  was  collated  on  January  11,  1619) 
to  send  out  eighty  colonists,  a  consignment  of  tools  and  im- 
plements, arms  and  ammunition,  kitchen  utensils  and  table 
service  for  the  Governor,  as  well  as  live  stock  and  feed. 
The  promise  was  never  carried  out.  There  was  faction  in  the 
company ;  faction  in  the  commercial  centers ;  and  faction  in  the 
State.  In  the  company's  councils  two  alternatives  seem  to  have 
been  the  subject  of  discussion  and  discord.  Some  thought  it  best 
that  the  old  method  should  be  pursued  of  forbidding  any  but  the 
company's  agents  trafficking  with  the  Indians  for  furs.     Others 


136  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEEXTH    CENTURY. 

proposed  that  settlement  should  be  encouraged,  and  a  free  trade 
in  Canada  permitted  between  the  settlers  and  the  Indians — • 
the  furs  obtained  by  the  settlers  to  be,  however,  stored  in  the 
company's  magazine,  shipped  by  the  company  to  France,  and 
paid  for  in  bills  of  exchange.  The  first  plan  would  have  been 
most  advantageous  to  the  company.  The  long  experience  of  the 
Hudson  Bay  Company  and  the  Northwest  Fur  Company  has 
since  demonstrated  the  fact,  and  their  own  short  and  checkered 
career  must  have  afforded  arguments  to  the  supporters  of  this 
view.  Such  a  policy,  however,  is  only  practicable  in  a  desolate  re- 
gion, from  which  immigration  can  be  excluded.  This  Champlain 
knew  not  to  be  the  case  in  Canada.  Beside  which,  the  English  had 
for  more  than  a  decade  been  firmly  established  in  Virginia;  the 
Dutch  had  obtained  a  footing  on  the  Hudson :  and  more  than  one 
company  of  Englishmen  had  attempted  to  found  a  colony  on  the 
New  England  coast.  The  English  claimed  Newfoundland  and 
challenged  the  French  right  to  Acadie.  Competition  would  there- 
fore be  acute  along  their  whole  border.  An  absolute  monopoly  of 
the  fur  trade  was  possible  only  by  dint  of  complete  territorial  iso- 
lation. Champlain  saw  this  to  be  impossible,  and  he  consequently 
favored  a  modification  of  the  company's  policy,  which  would 
give  it  a  control  merely  of  the  commercial  operations  of  the  com- 
munity, and  would  encourage  the  inhabitants  themselves  to  push 
the  trade  with  the  Indians  into  remote  sections  of  the  continent. 
Were  that  policy  adopted,  commerce  w'ould  grow  with  the  in- 
crease of  population,  to  the  great  benefit  of  the  company.  .So 
argued  Champlain :  but  the  company  hesitated  to  adopt  so 
radical  a  measure,  dreading  that,  if  the  freedom  of  trade  with  the 
Indians  were  conceded,  equal  freedom  of  trade  between  the  Colony 
and  France  would  be  demanded,  and  could  hardly  be  denied.  The 
liberality  of  Champlain's  opinions  and  plans  evidently  created 
suspicion  in  the  minds  of  the  associates  regarding  his  entire  and 
undivided  devotion  to  their  interests.  Accordingly,  when  he  was  on 
the  point  of  sailing  for  Quebec  with  his  wife  and  household  in  the 
spring  of  1619,  he  was  informed  that  the  company  had  handed 
over  the  management  of  their  commercial  affairs  and  of  their 
property  in  Quebec  to  Pontgrave.  so  that  he.  Champlain,  might  be 


CHAMPLAIN  AND  THE  COMPANY.  I37 

free  to  prosecute  his  explorations  in  the  interior  without  let  or 
hindrance  from  the  demands  of  business. 

Pontgrave  sailed,  but  without  Champlain,  who  declined  to 
accept  a  divided  authority.  He  claimed  that,  under  the  King's 
commission,  he  was  lieutenant  of  Monsieur  le  Prince,  and  that 
his  authority  as  Governor  extended  over  the  whole  population  and 
over  all  property  in  New  France,  except  the  actual  merchandise  of 
the  company  in  the  company's  store  in  Quebec,  whose  factor 
he  was  in  the.  habit  of  appointing-  as  his  lieutenant  during  his  ab- 
sence. Pontgrave  had  been,  and  still  was,  his  closest  friend ; 
he  was  old  enough  to  be  his  father ;  and  it  was  through  no 
feeling  of  jealousy  towards  him  that  he  refused  to  recognize 
this  joint  authority,  but  simply  because  his  duty  to  the  State  was 
paramount.  While  he  had  been  willing  to  work  for  the  company 
and  to  receive  compensation  for  it,  he  was  Governor  as  Lieutenant 
for  Charles  de  Bourbon,  and  Lieutenant  General  of  the  King  in 
New  France,  and  he  could  not,  therefore,  permit  within  his  do- 
minion the  establishment  and  exercise  of  any  independent  power. 
Already  the  course  of  events  in  Virginia  was  affording  an  illus- 
tration of  the  direction  likely  to  be  taken  by  colonial  enterprise 
when  freed  from  imperial  control ;  it  may  have  been  this  that 
suggested  Champlain's  reflection  that  the  motive  of  the  com- 
pany's officers  was  "to  create  an  independent  government, 
and  to  found  a  republic  after  their  own  fashion,  using  the 
King's  commission  merely  as  a  cloak  under  which  to  carry  out 
their  sinister  designs."  The  suppression  of  the  Huguenot  cause, 
soon  after  this  date,  as  a  controlling  influence  in  French  politics, 
was  rendered  easier  by  the  example  which  England  afforded  of 
the  tendency  of  freedom  of  thought  and  unlicensed  debate.  Of  the 
two  the  French  preferred  the  absolutism  of  Richelieu  and  later  of 
Louis  XIV.,  to  the  excesses  of  Republicanism. 

The  presumption  of  the  English  North  American  colonists  was 
so  utterly  obnoxious  to  Richelieu,  Mazarin  and  Colbert,  and  the 
rights  asserted  by  the  colonial  assemblies  and  their  encroachment 
on  imperial  control  so  opposed  to  the  theory  of  government  pro- 
pounded by  these  great  statesmen  and  practised  liv  their  masters, 
that,  in  framing  a  colonial  policy  for  France,  they  cautiously  elim- 


138  QUEBFX   IN   THE  SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

inated  every  concession  which  could  he  used  as  a  pretext  for  even 
the  most  elementary  exercise  of  popular  government  by  the  col- 
onists. Richelieu  was  not  yet  handling  the  reins  of  State,  but 
the  sentiment  which  he  subsequently  formulated  into  a  principle, 
as  mentioned  by  Champlain  in  his  edition  of  1632,  already  con- 
trolled the  Court ;  and  not  without  good  reason,  for  republicanism 
and  absolute  monarchy  were  rapidly  becoming  belligerent  issues 
across  the  channel.  He  expressed,  as  representative  of  the  Crown, 
what  had  become  the  determinate  policy  of  French  sovereigns,  for 
the  States  General  had  been  dismissed  in  1614,  not  to  reassemble 
till  the  fatal  meeting  in  1789.  The  theory  and  practice  of 
French  colonial  rule  on  the  North  American  continent  were  thus 
in  pronounced  antithesis  to  those  adopted  by  England  ;  the  rigidity 
of  the  French  policy  being  doubtless  accentuated  by  the  encour- 
agement which  the  English  policy  was  seen  to  give  to  Democracy. 
Champlain,  instead  of  sailing,  went  with  his  family  to  Rouen 
to  lodge  his  protest  in  person  before  the  associates,  and  to  frus- 
trate the  machinations  of  his  old  enemy,  Boyer,  whom  he  charged 
with  fomenting  all  the  trouble,  though  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  in- 
voke private  spite  to  account  for  the  attitude  of  the  opponents  of 
the  company.  The  letter  from  Louis  XIII.  to  the  association,  by 
which  Champlain  supported  his  claim,  sufficiently  explains  the 
embarrassing  position  in  which  the  company  found  itself,  and  the 
plan  by  which  it  sought  to  solve  the  dilemma.  The  letter  com- 
plains of  the  laxity  of  the  company  in  establishing  families  of 
work  people  and  artisans  at  Quebec,  and  at  other  points  in  New 
France.  It  insists  on  the  company's  aiding  Champlain  in  carrying 
out  the  King's  orders  to  plant  colonists,  whose  multiplication 
would  inure  to  the  royal  advantage  and  the  public  good.  At  the 
same  time  the  letter  expresses  the  wish  that  all  this  be  done  with- 
out inconvenience  to  the  company's  servants  or  injury  to  the  com- 
pany's trade  in  furs.  It  implies  that  this  costly  and  unproductive 
colonization  is  to  be  carried  out  by  the  company  at  its  own  ex- 
pense ;  for  it  was  the  policy  of  France,  from  the  time  of  Francis 
I.,  to  relieve  the  treasury  of  outlay  for  colonial  expansion  by  in- 
ducing individuals  or  companies  to  undertake  the  burden  in  return 
for  trade  concessions  and  privileges.     While  the  French  Govern- 


A  CHANGE  OF  VICEROY.  I39 

ment  assumed  little,  if  any,  pecuniary  risk,  it  nevertheless  ham- 
pered its  colonies  by  a  rigorous  paternal  regime,  allowing  no 
initiative  or  real  freedom  of  action  to  those  who  took  part  in  the 
colonial  enterprise,  whether  as  incorporators  in  France,  or  as  ser- 
vants and  colonists  abroad. 

As  the  bureaucratic  system  of  Old  France  was  to  be  transferred 
with  all  its  blighting  effects  to  New  France,  Champlain  deter- 
mined, at  least,  to  protect  his  own  position,  appealed  from  the 
company  to  the  Council,  followed  the  Court  to  Tours,  and  secured 
an  edict  confirming  him  in  the  command  of  Quebec,  and  of  the 
other  places  in  New  France,  and  prohibiting  the  association,  under 
pains  and  penalties,  from  hindering  him  in  the  performance  of  his 
functions. 

The  Prince  of  Conde's  Viceroyaltv  had  been  rather  a  sinecure, 
for  he  had  been  in  prison  during  most  of  his  term  of  office. 
He  celebrated  his  release  by  giving  one-half  of  a  year's  salary  to 
the  Recollets  as  a  contribution  to  their  seminary  at  Quebec.  As 
his  substitute,  the  Alarechal  de  Themines,  seems  to  have  interested 
himself  in  nothing  but  the  salary  attached  to  the  office,  Champlain 
must  have  desired  a  more  active,  if  not  more  influential,  viceroy. 
One  was  found  in  the  person  of  Monsieur  de  Montmorency,  Ad- 
miral of  France.  The  Prince  de  Conde  was  willing  to  resign  for  a 
consideration,  and  the  Admiral  was  willing  to  pay  that  considera- 
tion of  11,000  ecus.  The  bargain  was  made  through  Sieur  Vignier 
as  intermediary,  and  the  appointment  was  confirmed  by  the  King. 
At  the  same  time  Monsieur  Dolu,  Grand  Audiencier  (Chief 
Usher)  of  France,  was  appointed  Intendant,  his  functions  being 
to  conduct  the  civil  government  of  the  colony  and  to  watch  the 
Governor.  There  were  in  the  colony  fifty  or  sixty  people.  They 
had  to  rule  them  a  King  as  supreme,  his  Vicerov  in  France,  a 
Governor  as  Lieutenant  of  the  Viceroy  in  Canada,  and  an  In- 
tendant to  assist  or  thwart  the  Governor  as  the  case  might  be. 
To  control  their  fate,  minister  to  their  religious  wants,  and  do 
missionary  work  among  the  Indians,  the  company  supported  five 
friars,  though  their  charter  required  them  to  maintain  six.  Fif- 
teen to  twenty,  therefore,  of  the  population,  under  pay  of  the  com- 
pany, occupied  high  civil  or  ecclesiastical  positions. 


140  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVExNTEENTH    CENTURY. 

Champlain  had  now  been  a  year  and  a  half  in  France,  perhaps 
not  altogether  unwillingly,  as  his  young  wife,  to  whom  he  had 
been  betrothed  while  she  was  yet  a  girl,  had  now  attained  full 
womanhood,  and  this  was  the  hrst  time  in  his  roving  life  he 
had  enjoyed  a  taste  of  domestic  tranquility.  Pontgrave,  who  had 
sailed  against  his  protest,  as  his  colleague,  had  spent  the  winter  in 
Canada,  and  Champlain  was  doubtless  anxious  to  join  him  for 
more  reasons  than  one.  To  show  his  sincerity  as  a  promoter  of 
colonization,  he  determined  to  take  his  wife  with  him.  When  he 
was  on  the  point  of  sailing  from  Honfleur  in  the  spring  of  1620, 
the  company  made  a  final  efifort  to  cripple  his  authority,  but  an 
appeal  to  the  Viceroy  and  Intendant  brought  a  categorical 
answer,  confirming  him  in  full  authority  over  all  property,  ex- 
cept the  merchandise  belonging  to  the  company,  and  over  all  the 
persons  and  the  actions  of  the  company's  factors  and  clerks,  in 
their  capacity  as  the  company's  servants.  The  King  promised 
the  armament  for  a  fort  which  Champlain  was  instructed  to  erect 
at  Quebec,  presumablv  at  the  company's  expense,  and  he  was 
authorized,  if  the  company  proved  recalcitrant,  to  seize  their 
fleet,  though  with  what  force  of  men  he  was  to  make  the  seizure 
is  not  clear.  To  encourage  him  in  his  task  of  establishing  the 
royal  authority  and  spreading  the  Catholic  religion,  the  King 
wrote  him  a  letter  on  the  7th  of  May,  1620,  over  his  own  sign 
manual.  Sailing  with  his  family  a  few  days  later,  he  arrived, 
after  a  tedious  voyage  of  two  months,  at  Tadousac,  which  was 
still  the  principal  port  of  New  France,  where  both  passengers  and 
freight  were  generally  transferred  for  the  upper  St.  Lawrence. 
His  brother-in-law,  Boulle,  had  preceded  him  in  a  vessel  com- 
manded by  Sieur  Deschesnes,  and  as  he  was  not  aware  of  his 
sister's  intention  to  accompany  her  husband,  the  meeting  was 
doubly  joyful.  The  news  he  told  Champlain  was  that  they  had 
surprised  and  nearly  captured  two  ships  of  La  Rochelle,  which 
w'ere  trading  illicitly  with  the  Indians  near  Bic,  and  committing 
the  indiscretion  of  exchanging  firearms  for  furs.  The  provoking 
intruders  had,  however,  proved  themselves  the  better  sailors  and 
made  their  escape.  As  the  trade  of  the  St.  Lawrence  below  Que- 
bec had  been  decreed  free,  the  irregularity  of  these  Huguenot 


A    NEGLECTKD    COLONY.  I4I 

skippers  from  La  Rochellc  prol)al)ly  consisted  in  their  sailing 
without  a  hcense  or  some  form  of  register,  a  latitude  in  trade 
which  there  is  reason  to  believe  may  have  been  curtailed,  as  by  the 
Due  de  Ventadour's  commission  in  1625  to  Champlain,  he  was  au- 
thorized to  seize  all  vessels  trading  to  the  west  of  Gaspe.  Again 
and  again  the  iniquity  of  these  enterprising  but  heretical  intruders 
moves  both  Champlain  and  the  RecoUet  Fathers  to  wrath. 

After  his  two  years  absence  from  Quebec,  Champlain  found 
the  Jiabitation  in  a  woefully  ruinous  state.  The  rain  poured 
through  the  roof,  the  wind  whistled  between  cracks  in  the  walls, 
the  store-room  was  a1)out  to  fall  in,  and  one  of  the  wings  had 
collapsed  bodily  ;  and  yet  this  was  to  be  the  abode  of  the  delicately 
nurtured  wife,  whom  he  had  brought  to  the  country  as  an  induce- 
ment to  others  to  follow.  Madame  Champlain's  brother,  Boulle, 
had  with  Pontgrave  spent  the  previous  winter  there ;  but  the  ex- 
cuse for  the  neglected  condition  of  the  place  was  that  the  few  me- 
chanics had  been  withdrawn  for  the  purpose  of  erecting  the  mon- 
astery, which  the  RecoUet  Fathers  were  building  on  the  banks  of 
the  St.  Charles,  half  a  league  away,  and  in  putting  up  a  house  for 
Guillaume  Hebert  on  the  top  of  the  cliff.  However,  though  the 
roof  of  the  chateau  was  leaky,  he  was  the  Lieutenant  of  the 
Viceroy  of  all  New  France,  and  therefore  on  the  day  after  his 
arrival  he  caused  his  commission,  as  Lieutenant  of  the  new  Vice- 
roy, to  be  publicly  read  by  Commissionaire  Guers,  with  the  accom- 
paniment of  cannon,  after  the  RecoUet  Fathers  had  said  mass  in 
the  little  chapel.  The  whole  population  of  fifty  shouted  "Virc  Ic 
roi!"  whereupon  Champlain  took  possession  of  the  Jiabitation  and 
the  country  in  the  name  of  the  Viceroy,  the  Due  de  Montmorency. 

Thus  Canada  passed  from  the  status  of  a  mere  trading  domain 
of  a  commercial  company,  like  the  Hudson  Bay  Company,  into  a 
royal  colony.  During  the  two  years  of  his  absence  it  would 
seem  that  no  increase  of  population  had  taken  place.  On  the 
contrary,  death  had  been  busy  with  the  little  colony.  Good 
Father  du  Plessis,  to  whom  the  little  settlement  owed  its  deliv- 
erance from  the  Indian  massacre  in  the  spring  of  161 8,  died  in 
August  of  the  following  year.  He  had  recently  returned  from 
France,  whither  he  had  sfone  with   Father  Huet  on  the'  boot- 


142  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

less  mission  of  iirgiiii:^  the  company  to  send  out  settlers.  And 
poor  Anne  Hebert,  who  had  been  married  to  Etienne  Jon- 
quest  with  much  festivity,  so  recently  as  the  autumn  of 
1617,  had  died  in  childbed.  It  was  a  cheerless  home-coming  to 
Champlain  to  be  greeted  by  death,  decay,  indolence  and  indilTer- 
ence.  The  only  enery^etic  denizens  of  the  little  hamlet  were  the 
RecoUets ;  yet  he  can  hardly  disguise  his  irritation  at  the  work- 
men having  been  withdrawn  from  the  ])ublic  liabitation  to  help 
in  building  the  monastery  for  the  friars.  They  had  planted  it 
far  away,  so  that  in  solitude  and  silence  they  might  be  undisturbed 
in  their  devotions.  The  Fathers  had  acquired  a  site  about  half 
a  league  from  the  habitation  the  summer  previously,  near  the 
Little  River,  as  it  was  then  and  is  still  called,  and  not  far  distant 
from  the  creek  where  Cartier  had  moored  his  fleet  in  the  autumn 

of  1535- 

The  land  on  which  the  friars  built  was  a  tract  of  pasture 
which  that  enterprising  colonist  Hebert  had  cleared  on  the  right 
bank  of  the  St.  Charles  about  two  miles  from  its  mouth.  This  the 
Fathers  had  acquired  from  him  in  exchange  for  a  clearance  they 
had  made  near  the  habitation  in  the  summer  of  1619.  Here  they 
commenced  collecting  building  material  for  their  convent,  a  work 
in  which  they  were  heartily  aided  by  the  large-minded  Pontgrave, 
notwithstanding  that  he  was  a  Huguenot ;  but  the  foundation  stone 
was  not  laid  until  the  3rd  of  the  following  June,  when  the  cere- 
mony was  performed  by  Father  d'Olbeau,  as  substitute  for  Father 
Jamay,  the  Commissaire,  who  had  not  yet  returned  from  France. 
Thus,  when  Champlain  came  out  wdth  his  family  in  July,  building 
operations  were  active,  and  more  public  interest  was  taken  in  the 
progress  of  the  convent  than  in  the  prospects  of  the  colony.  The 
work  on  the  mission  house  must  have  been  pressed,  inasmuch  as 
on  August  15  Father  Jamay  gives  a  detailed  account  of  the  build- 
ing to  his  patron,  the  Grand  Vicaire  de  Pontoise.  It  was  a  two- 
storied  wooden  building,  34  feet  by  22  feet,  with  a  capacious 
cellar.  The  lower  story  was  divided  by  a  stone  partition  wall 
into  two  rooms,  one  of  which  served  temporarily  as  a  chapel, 
the  other  as  a  kitchen  and  refectory.  The  upper  story  was  di- 
vided into  one  large  and  four  small  rooms  with  provisions  for 


H 


O 


THE  RECOLLET   MONASTERY.  I43 

isolation  in  a  sixth.  Tlicre  were  stone  towers  for  defense  at  three 
corners,  and  a  demilune  of  heavy  timbers  before  the  entrance. 
The  Little  River  tiowed  in  front  of  the  convent,  and  two  streams 
whose  sources  were  close  together  to  the  north,  and  which  flowed 
to  the  east  and  west  of  tlie  building,  were  by  deepening  made  to 
serve  as  a  fosse ;  and  thus  this  primitive  abode  of  the  ministers  of 
Jesus  repeated,  to  the  great  delight  of  the  Grand  Vicaire,  all  the 
features  of  a  medieval  monastery — a  retreat  for  devotion,  a  semi- 
nary, a  hospital,  and  a  stronghold.  It  was,  however,  unlike  most 
of  the  old  world  monasteries  in  their  decadence,  for  the  Fathers 
were  determined  to  set  their  converts  an  example  as  industrious 
agriculturists.  The  Inhlding  was  then,  as  the  General  Hospital  was 
till  recently,  in  a  swamp.  This  they  endeavored  to  drain  by 
ditches  so  laid  out  that  they  would  also  serve  as  a  means  of 
defense.  By  the  autumn  of  this  first  season  they  had  of  live 
stock  a  mule,  a  female  ass.  a  number  of  pigs,  one  pair  of  geese, 
fourteen  fowls,  and  eight  ducks.  They  hoped  within  two  years 
to  be  able  to  raise  enough  grain  and  pigs  to  support  twelve  per- 
sons on  a  diet  of  bread,  beer,  and  salt  pork.  These  would  be  sup- 
plemented by  fish  from  the  river  and  moose  meat,  which  the  In- 
dians during  the  winter  would  exchange  for  a  trifle  of  bread. 

The  Recollets  transferred  this  property  to  Bishop  Saint  \^allier, 
in  1690,  for  use  as  a  General  Hospital. ^That  institution,  therefore, 
marks  definitely  for  us  to-day  the  site  of  this  monastery,  which 
absorbed  so  much  of  the  energies  of  the  good  Fathers  in  1620  and 
1621.  The  building  was  intended  and  planned  for  the  double  pur- 
pose of  enabling  the  friars  to  live  in  conformity  with  the  rules  of 
their  order,  and  of  serving  as  a  seminary  for  the  education  of 
Indian  boys.  Its  distance  from  the  settlement  had  certain  ad- 
vantages ;  but  as  the  journey  to  and  fro  in  winter  was  somewliat 
trying,  some  of  the  friars  continued  to  live  in  the  Parish  House 
attached  to  the  little  church  near  the  habitation ;  for  the  Fathers 
then  and  subsequently  were  empowered  by  the  brief  of  Guido  Ben- 
tivolio,  Nuncio  of  Paul  V.,  to  perform  most  of  the  functions  of  the 
secular  clergy  in  New  France — to  preach,  baptize,  hear  confessions 
and  to  administer  the  sacraments  of  the  Fucharist,  marria'^-c  and 
extreme  unction.  They  changed  the  name  of  the  Little  River  from 


144  OUEnF.C   IX    THE   SEXKXTEENTH    CENTURY. 

that  of  St.  Croix,  given  it  by  Cartier,  to  St.  Charles,  in  honor  of 
their  hberal  patron,  Charles  de  Bones,  Grand  Vicaire  de  Pontoise. 
He  and  the  Sieur  Houel  were  their  most  influential  financial  sup- 
porters, and  contributions  from  other  sources  were  not  lacking; 
but  the  Fathers  never  ceased  to  complain  of  the  refusal  of  ade- 
quate support  from  the  associates  of  the  company,  who  evidently 
considered  that  the  provision  they  were  compelled  to  make  for 
the  support  of  six  friars  was  a  sufficient  contribution.  The 
Grand  Vicaire,  writing  in  1621,  promises  from  the  Sieur  Houel 
200  ecus  annually  towards  the  support  of  six  Indian  children  in 
the  seminary  of  St.  Charles,  and  agrees  to  supplement  that  with 
a  like  sum  from  his  own  purse,  and  hopes  to  send  them  in  the 
following  year  1,000  ecus  from  other  contributors.  The  Sieur 
Houel  also  offers  to  ship  them  1.200  pounds  of  provisions.  By 
that  time  the  Church,  the  ^Monastery  and  the  Seminary  of  Xotre 
Dame  des  Anges  had  been  built,  and  high  hopes  were  enter- 
tained of  the  future  utility  of  the  establishment — hopes  which  un- 
fortunately were  very  slow  of  realization.  It  was  a  time  wb.cn 
there  was  much  enthusiasm  among  thinking  men,  as  well  as 
among  the  pious,  bred  of  the  hope  that  European  civilization 
v>ould  transform  the  wild  tribes  of  the  earth  into  refined  speci- 
mens of  humanity.  Montaigne,  in  his  essay  entitled  "Des  Coches," 
reflects  on  what  Spanish  greed  had  done  in  comparison  wirli 
wdiat  might  have  been  effected  by  a  different  treatment  of  the 
aborigines :  if.  that  is  to  say.  Europeans  had  set  them  anexampleof 
every  virtue  instead  of  initiating  them  into  every  vice.  The  at- 
tempt was  honestly  made  by  the  ecclesiastics  of  New  France, 
and,  had  ^Montaigne  lived  to  see  the  results,  he  would  have  ad- 
mitted that  there  was  some  error  in  the  premises  from  which  he 
drew  his  hopeful  conclusion.  The  monks  were  doubtless  doing  a 
good  work,  and  doing  it  from  motives  that  put  to  shame  the  sordid 
aims  of  the  mercantile  companv.  But  Champlain  may  be  ex- 
cused if  he  fretted  over  the  abstraction  of  so  much  labor  and 
energy  from  the  realization  of  his  own  plans,  which,  as  Lieutenant 
of  the  Viceroy  and  no  longer  a  mere  agent  of  the  company,  his 
heart  was  now  bent  on  carrying  out. 

Heretofore  he  had  been  the  most  zealous  of  traders,  combining 


CHATEAU     ST.     LOUTS.  I45 

in  some  mysterious  way  the  function  of  Governor  of  the  colony 
and  agent  of  the  fur  company ;  but  his  recent  experience  in  France 
liad  satisfied  him  of  the  incompatabihty  of  such  dual  responsi- 
bilities, and  henceforth  he  stands  forth  in  the  simple  character  of 
Governor.  In  this  capacity  we  have  seen  him  on  his  arrival  pro- 
claimed Lieutenant  of  the  Viceroy,  with  such  formality  and 
pageantry  as  his  slender  command  of  accessories  would  permit. 
This  done  he  immediately  despatched  Guers,  who  had  acted  as 
clerk  and  herald  in  the  ceremony  of  his  inauguration,  to  Three 
Rivers,  to  watch  and  report  the  proceediugs  of  Pontgrave  and  the 
company's  clerk,  while  he  busied  himself  in  repairing  the  halnta- 
tio)i  and  in  plauning  a  fort,  which  he  had  from  the  first  foreseen 
to  be  essential  to  the  secm-ity  of  the  settlement,  but  the 
building  of  which  the  company  from  short-sightedness  or  stingi- 
ness had  persistently  opposed.  The  situation  he  selected  was 
on  the  very  brow  of  the  cliiT  overlooking  the  habifation.  and 
yet  commanding  the  river  where  its  channel  was  the  narrowest.* 
It  was  so  well  chosen  that  it  was  retained  as  the  site  of  the  palace 
of  the  Governors  of  New  France  and  of  Great  Britain  until 
destroyed  by  fire  in  1834.  It  was  therefore  the  scene  of  many 
of  the  most  dramatic  incidents  in  the  history  of  America. 
Durham  Terrace  replaced  the  old  Chateau,  and  the  eastern  end 
of  Dufferin  Terrace  now  occupies  part  of  the  same  space.  Cham- 
plain's  first  fort,  built  on  the  site  of  the  future  Chateau,  was  of 
wood,  and  being  designed  on  a  plan  commensurate  with  his  very 
modest  means,  was  adequate  only  as  a  defence  against  savage  foes; 
though  even  then  he  had  apprehensions  of  an  attack  from  the  ra- 
pacious English.  And  so  the  summer  passed,  the  friars  building 
their  convent,  the  Governor  his  castle.  The  two  buildings  rep- 
resented powers  which  should  have  worked  harmoniously  for  the 
public  good,  but  which  were  preparing  instead  for  a  conflict  which 
was  to  last  as  long  as  French  rule  itself. 

Pontgrave  went  to  France  with  his  cargo  of  peltries,  accom- 
panied by  Roumier,  his  under  clerk,  leaving  Jean  Caumont  dit  le 

*  Some  authorities  are  inclined  to  place  the  first  fort  where  the  Grand 
Battery  now  commences,  but  there  is  no  evidence  that  Montmagny's  reconstructed 
fort  was  on  a  different  .site  from  that  chosen  by  Champlain. 


146  OITF.REC    IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

Mons  in  charq'c  of  the  store.  He  did  not,  however,  sail  from 
Tadousac  until  he  had  forwarded  Chaniplain  all  the  available 
stores  for  the  support  of  the  little  colony  of  sixty  souls,  of  whom 
ten  were  still  employed  at  the  monastery  at  the  expense  of  the 
Friars.  The  Church,  the  State  and  a  tradin^^  company  were 
thus  the  only  active,  independent  elements.  Of  individual  enter- 
prise or  personal  initiative  we  hear  nothino'. 

The  following  year,  1621,  was  not  marked  by  any  event  of 
great  permanent  interest,  l:)ut  it  was  a  year  of  intense  excitement 
at  Qitebec.  owing  to  the  fact  that  Chaniplain,  as  Governor,  came 
into  collision  with  the  old  company,  which  found  it  difficult  to  ac- 
cept its  reduced  position  as  a  mere  trader,  destitute  of  political 
authority.  To  complicate  the  position,  the  Due  de  Montmorency 
gave  a  charter  to  another  company,  composed  of  members  of 
purer  faith,  and  it  was  hoped  of  greater  colonizing  zeal.  As  might 
have  been  expected,  the  old  company  and  the  new  did  not  har- 
monize at  first.  The  season's  operations  opened  by  the  departure 
of  le  Mons,  the  company's  clerk,  from  Quebec  for  Tadousac  with  a 
cargo  of  merchandise  intended  for  barter  with  the  Indians.  On 
his  way,  however,  he  met  Captains  Dinnay  and  Guers,  armed  with 
commissions  from  the  A'iceroy,  and  supported  by  five  sailors,  three 
soldiers  and  a  boy.  Having  been  warned  by  them  of  the  creation 
of  the  new  company  and  the  cancellation  of  the  rights  of  the  old, 
he  could  do  nothing  but  turn  1)ack. 

Dumay  and  Guers  were  the  bearers  of  quite  a  batch  of  letters 
to  the  Governor.  The  King  himself  complimented  his  servant, 
and  promised  arms  and  munitions.  Another  was  from  Monsieur 
de  Puisieux,  Secretaire  des  commandements  du  Roi,  informing 
him  that  it  was  at  the  solicitation  of  Monsieur  Dolu,  the  Intendant, 
that  the  arms  were  being  furnished.  Then  Monsieur  the  Due 
himself  wrote  that,  for  various  reasons,  the  old  company,  com- 
posed of  merchants  of  Rouen  and  St.  Malo,  had  been  dissolved, 
and  he  had  solicited  the  Sieur  de  Caen  and  his  nephew  and  cer- 
tain associates  to  aid  Chaniplain  in  sustaining  the  authority  of  the 
King,  and  that  Monsieur  Dolu  would  give  him  particulars  as 
to  the  arrangement  made  with  the  new  company.  He  assured 
him,  however,  that  his  personal  position  would  not  be  damaged. 


RIVAL   COMPANIES.  I47 

Monsieur  Dolu's  letter  was  much  more  emphatic.  It  instructed 
him  to  seize  the  merchandise  and  property  of  the  old  company, 
as  a  penalty  for  their  failure  to  carry  out  the  colonization  condi- 
tions of  their  contract,  and  to  aid  the  de  Caens,  who,  though  not  of 
the  true  faith,  would,  it  was  hoped,  be  induced  to  repent  of  the 
error  of  their  ways  and  become  Catholics.  He  received  still  other 
letters  from  Villemenon,  Intendant  to  the  Admiralty,  assuring  him 
that  the  de  Caens  would  sail  with  two  good  ships  fully  armed 
and  provisioned.  Had  the  de  Caens  themselves  been  the  bearers 
of  the  letters,  and  had  they  come  prepared  to  back  their  privileges 
and  pretensions  by  ample  force  of  arms,  Champlain's  course 
would  have  been  clear  and  easy.  C)r  had  Dumay  and  Guers 
prudently  delivered  their  letters  and  message  to  him  alone,  and 
kept  silence  as  to  the  success  of  the  agitation  against  the  old 
company  in  France,  Champlain  would  have  allowed  its  agents  to 
continue  their  operations  until  he  was  strong  enough  to  carry 
out  his  categorical  instructions.  But  Dumay  and  Guers  had 
boasted  of  the  commission  even  before  reaching  Quebec ;  and 
after  they  arrived  there,  the  employees  of  the  new  company  twitted 
those  of  the  old,  not  only  with  loss  of  service,  but  with  probable 
forfeiture  of  arrears  of  pay,  till  there  arose  a  little  revolution  in  tlie 
hamlet.  Champlain  was  powerless.  He  therefore  not  only  as- 
sured the  officials  of  the  old  company  of  protection  from  personal 
loss,  but  granted  them  permission  to  continue  trading  operations 
until  the  express  commands  of  the  King  were  communicated  by  de 
Caen  himself.  On  the  other  hand.  Dumay  and  Guers  had  brought 
out  a  cargo  of  merchandise  for  exchange,  and  this  they  insisted  on 
their  right  to  barter  for  furs.  To  have  granted  their  request 
would  have  brought  matters  to  a  crisis.  In  refusing  it  Champlain 
pointed  out  to  them  that,  if  the  decision  of  the  question  of  ex- 
clusive trade  should  be  decided  in  Council  in  their  favor,  then  the 
skins  forfeited  by  the  old  company  would  be  ample  compensation 
for  any  loss  the  new  company  might  sustain  by  mere  postpone- 
ment of  operations.  Having  thus  compromised  with  the  opposing 
factions,  he  sent  Dumay  down  the  river  to  meet  de  Caen  and  ad- 
vise him  of  what  had  happened.  But,  just  as  le  Mons  had 
a   fortnight   before    deemed    it    prudent   to    retire   when    on    his 


148  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY, 

way  to  Tadousac,  he  met  Duniay  and  Guers  with  their 
boatload  of  armed  men,  so  now  Dumay  hastened  back  to  warn 
Champlain  that  his  old  comrade  and  friend,  Pontgrave,  was 
close  at  hand  in  the  "■Salemande,"  a  vessel  of  150  tons,  with  a 
crew  of  sixty-h\e  men,  probably  bent  on  sustaining  the  rights 
of  the  old  company.  To  oppose  Pontgrave  Champlain  could  muster 
only  a  crew  of  eighteen,  most  of  whom  were  at  Tadousac  and 
not  at  Quebec,  and  a  possible  contingent  of  some  twelve  addi- 
tional men.  These  were  all  he  could  rely  upon,  as  the  rest  of  the 
colony  was  dependent  on  the  old  company.  It  was  clearly  there- 
fore more  politic  to  negotiate  than  to  fight.  But  in  order  to  be 
in  a  position — as  Champlain  expressed  it — to  parley  a  chcvaU  he 
manned  the  unfinished  fort  on  the  crest  of  the  hill,  with  Dumay, 
his  brother-in-law,  eight  of  his  own  men,  and  a  force  borrowed 
from  the  Recollet  Fathers,  while  he  induced  four  of  the  company's 
men  to  carry  provisions  and  ammunition  up  the  steep  hill  to 
provision  his  fortress.  He  himself  with  his  wife  awaited  develop- 
ments in  the  old  habitation  on  the  beach,  guarded  by  three  of 
Dumay's  crew,  four  servants  of  the  Recollets,  Guers,  his  clerk, 
and  some  of  the  inhabitants. 

On  the  7th,  a  schooner  hove  in  sight.  Father  George,  with 
M.  Guers.  met  the  new  arrivals  on  the  beach.  They  proved  to 
be  three  clerks  of  the  old  company,  so  peacefully  disposed  that 
Champlain  need  not  ha^•e  called  his  men  to  arms  and  raised  the 
drawbridge.  They  gave  the  latest  news,  from  France,  namely, 
that  the  old  company  had  protested  against  the  cancellation  of  its 
rights  before  the  term  of  its  concession  had  expired  ;  that  their 
plea  was  still  under  deliberation  by  the  Council,  but  that  the 
Admiralty  had  refused  to  give  their  ships  clearance.  They  were 
not  a  little  surprised  at  the  hostile  attitude  of  Champlain.  as 
they  themselves  were  not  only  peacefully  disposed,  but  prepared 
to  supply  the  colony  with  provisions,  of  which  it  stood  in  direst 
need.  Under  such  circumstances,  tlie  natural  course  was  to  wel- 
come them.  They  demanded  that  the  habitation  and  the  old  com- 
pany's stock  of  beaver  skins  be  turned  over  to  them,  but  these 
Champlain  empliatically  declined  to  surrender.  He  allowed  them, 
however,   to  proceed  to  Three  Rivers,  to  the  yearly   fair,   with 


THE  DIFFICULTIES  OF  THE  GOVERNOR.  I49 

their  merchandise.  Wlieii  they  were  fairly  gone,  Champlain  again 
sent  Dumay  down  the  river  to  apprise  de  Caen,  who  by  his 
tarrying  had  left  him  in  such  an  embarrassing  position, 
of  what  had  occurred.  In  a  few  days — on  the  13th  of  June — 
instead  of  de  Caen,  Champlain's  old  comrade,  Pontgrave,  ap- 
peared, not  with  his  war  ship  and  numerous  crew,  but  in  a  small 
vessel  loaded  with  merchandise  for  Indian  traffic.  Champlain 
having  expressed  his  surprise  that,  knowing  the  hostility  against 
the  company,  and  l)eing  aw^are  of  de  Caen's  mission,  he  had  left 
his  ship  at  Tadousac,  Pontgrave  assured  him  that,  if  the  decision 
of  Council  were  against  his  company,  and  de  Caen  came  out  with 
indisputable  authority  to  confiscate  their  property,  he  would  not 
resist.  He  assented  to  Champlain's  course  in  retaining  the  furs 
and  the  warehouse  as  a  pledge  of  the  company's  fulfilment  of  the 
conditions  of  the  charter,  or  as  a  forfeit  in  case  of  their  failure. 
Equitable  terms  having  thus  been  arranged  between  the  friends, 
Pontgrave  followed  the  other  employees  of  the  company  to  the 
rendezvous  at  Three  Rivers  with  his  boatload  of  goods. 

A  month  of  quietness  ensued  before  the  forerunner  of 
de  Caen  appeared  with  a  message  begging  Champlain  to 
join  him,  which,  however,  Champlain  declined  to  do,  and  pray- 
ing him  to  advise  the  Indians  that  he  was  coming  with  a  choice 
selection  of  merchandise.  Two  days  afterward  Roumier,  a  clerk 
of  the  old  company,  but  now  in  the  emplov  of  the  new,  followed. 
He  brought  letters  from  the  Intendant.  Dolu,  \'illemenon  and 
de  Caen.  They  informed  him  that  the  King  had  decreed 
that  both  the  companies  should  be  permitted  to  trade  during  the 
year  1621,  each  sending  to  the  St.  Lawrence  the  one  vessel  that 
had  already  sailed  (or  which  was  ready  to  sail),  but  that  no  ship 
was  to  sail  from  any  I'Vench  port  without  proper  clearance  papers, 
under  severe  pains  and  penalties.  The  two  companies  were  to  con- 
tribute equally  towards  the  support  of  the  captain,  soldiers,  priests 
and  residents  in  the  habi'lafioii.  Pontgrave  had  sailed  in  ignorance 
or  in  defiance  of  the  clause  which  imposed  confiscation  of  his  ship 
and  goods  in  case  of  irregularity  in  his  clearance  papers,  and  there 
was  therefore  technical  ground  for  proceeding  against  him.  Rut 
it  rested  with  Champlain.  and  not  with  de  Caen,  to  take  action.   To 


150  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

avert  trouble,  Chaniplain  induced  Father  (Jeorge  le  Baillif,  a  man 
evidently  of  tact  and  moderation,  to  descend  the  river  on  the 
17th  of  July  and  try  to  dissuade  de  Caen  from  taking  any  rash 
steps,  and  also  to  assuage  the  anger  of  Fathers  Paul  and 
Guillaume  who  had  a  grievance  against  Pontgrave.  Feather  George 
set  about  his  delicate  mission  with  laudable  despatch,  but  with- 
out much  success,  for  on  the  24th  he  was  back  from  Tadousac 
with  tlie  disquieting  message  that  de  Caen  was  bent  on  seizing 
Pontgrave's  ship,  but  would  delay  doing  so  until  Champlain 
should  arrive,  provided  he  did  not  tarry.  Champlain  was  un- 
willing to  leave  the  habitation  at  the  mercy  of  the  two  factions 
into  which  the  population  was  divided ;  so  ill  provided  was  he, 
moreover,  that  he  had  not  a  boat  of  his  own  fat  for  a  journey. 
As  it  was  evident,  however,  that  only  he  could  persuade  de  Caen 
to  pursue  a  moderate  course,  he  sent  to  Pontg-rave  to  borrow 
a  boat.  Pontgrave  not  only  accommodated  him,  but  came  down 
from  Three  Rivers,  ignorant  of  the  danger  which  threatened  him 
personally  and  his  property.  There  \vas  something  charming  in 
the  candor  and  inutual  trustfulness  of  these  tw^o  noble  men.  They 
had  endured  hardship  and  peril  together,  and  neither  could  think 
evil  of  the  other  or  suspect  the  other  of  sinister  motives. 

Champlain  was  met  by  de  Caen  at  the  Pointe  Aux  Alouettes. 
The  first  interview  was  friendly.  The  director  of  the  new  com- 
pany expressed  unwavering  allegiance  to  the  Viceroy,  and  recog- 
nized Champlain  and  his  lieutenancy.  When  they  reached  Ta- 
dousac he  offered  Champlain  the  hospitality  of  his  ship,  but 
Champlain,  wishing  to  be  neutral,  preferred  putting  up  with 
the  accommodation  his  own  schooner  afforded.  Then  the  quarrel 
broke  out  with  great  acrimony.  De  Caen  claimed  to  have  au- 
thoritative but  private  instructions,  which  he  refused,  however, 
to  exhibit.  In  virtue  of  these  he  demanded  the  seizure  of  Pont- 
grave's ship,  to  l)e  used  in  operations  against  the  illicit  traders, 
the  Rochellois.  Champlain  pointed  out  that  the  new  company 
and  its  agents  had  three  boats  manned  by  crews  of  150  men,  two 
l)cing  of  ample  size  to  patrol  the  river  and  gulf,  and 
destroy  all  marauders,  while  they  were  quite  unable  to  protect 
themselves.       Then     Father     George    took     up    the    argument, 


POACH.TNG   IN   THE   ST.    LAWRENCE.  I^I 

but  all  to  no  avail.  If  de  Caen's  only  reason  for  seizing 
Pontgrave's  ship  was  to  use  it  against  the  Rochelle  traders, 
Champlain  offered  to  take  command  of  it  himself,  provided  de 
Caen  would  supply  the  crew.  This  proposal  was  rejected. 
De  Caen  simply  wanted  the  ship,  and  as  he  had  ample  force — 
about  three  times  as  many  men  as  the  whole  male  population  of 
the  colony — he  determined  to  seize  it.  Thereupon  Champlain 
took  it  under  his  protection,  but  this  empty  assertion  of  sover- 
eignty availed  nothing.  De  Caen  warned  Champlain  he  would 
appropriate  the  vessel,  and  Champlain,  not  wishing  to  come 
into  open  collision  with  a  man  so  able  to  coerce  him  and  the 
colony,  conveniently  went  on  a  canoeing  expedition  up  the  Sa- 
guenay  while  the  high  handed  act  was  being  carried  into  eifect. 
Having  attained  his  object,  de  Caen  was  willing  to  treat  with 
Champlain  as  to  contributing  his  share  of  men  and  provisions  for 
the  habitation.  He  returned  Pontgrave's  ship,  pretending  that  it 
was  worthless  for  war  purposes,  but  demanded  and  received 
1,700  beaver  skins  in  return  for  provisions  which  he  claimed  he 
had  sold  to  the  old  company.  The  claim  thus  made  at  the  point  of 
the  sword  could  not  be  refused,  so  Father  George  paid  it. 
Instead,  however,  of  fulfilling  his  promise  to  send  twenty-five 
men,  as  his  contingent,  to  the  habitation,  with  provisions  for 
their  support  during  the  coming  winter,  he  sent  only  eighteen. 
The  old  company  supplied  the  deficiency. 

While  de  Caen  had  been  wasting  time  in  argument  and  war- 
like boasting,  the  rival  traders  had  been  busy.  A  ship  was  lying 
at  Isle  Verte,  not  fifteen  miles  distant,  bartering  away  its  cargo 
for  furs  with  the  Indians.  It  slipped  away  the  day  before  he 
discovered  its  presence,  and  all  he  found  was  an  abandoned  pali- 
sade, which  the  traders  had  erected  for  defense  if  attacked. 
But  Champlain's  annoyances  were  not  yet  over.  Besides  sending 
him  some  provisions  for  winter  support,  de  Caen  forwarded  a 
quantity  of  arms  and  ammunition.  Believing  it  impossible,  after 
he  had  inspected  these,  that  the  King  and  the  Viceroy  could  have 
so  inadequately  fulfilled  their  promise  to  supply  him  with  weap- 
ons, he  had  a  sworn  inventory  taken  of  the  arms.  The  document  is 
curious,  as  being  the  first  bill  of  warlike  material  furnished  to  a 


152  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

fortress  destined  to  become  so  famous  in  the  world's  history.  It 
enumerates  twelve  halberds  with  handles  of  whitewood  painted 
black;  two  arquebuses,  fitted  with  wheel  locks,  five  to  six  feet 
long";  two  arquebuses  to  be  fired  with  matches,  of  the  same  length; 
fifty-two  pounds  of  good  matches ;  one  hundred  and  eighty-seven 
pounds  of  worthless  matches ;  fifty  common  picks  ;  two  petards  of 
cast  iron,  weighing  forty-four  pounds  each ;  one  butterfiy-tent ; 
two  helmets  and  one  axe  ;  sixty-four  sets  of  pikemen's  weapons, 
witliout  armlets ;  two  barrels  of  musket  balls,  weighing  439 
pounds.  Tn  addition  there  were  handed  over  to  Champlain  two 
barrels  of  gunpowder  for  cannon,  and  six  barrels  of  musket  balls, 
weighing  2,479  pounds.  But  Isaac  Halard,  the  new  company's 
clerk,  who  delivered  them,  could  not  say  whether  they  were  con- 
signed to  Champlain  by  the  French  .Government  or  contributed  by 
de  Caen  himself.  Muskets  had  been  introduced  into  France  about 
1575,  but  there  were  none  in  the  consignment,  and  what  powder 
there  was  was  coarse  grained,  for  cannon — none  for  firearms. 

Champlain  and  the  whole  colony  must  have  experienced  a 
feeling  of  blank  despair  over  the  heartlessness  and  falsity  of 
the  Government  and  the  avarice  of  the  trading  company.  Well 
might  he  say  that  he  "could  not  imagine  it  possible  his  Majesty 
should  have  sent  us  such  a  sorry  lot  of  weapons  for  our  defense, 
especially  after  doing  him  the  honor  of  himself  promising  by 
letter  an  ample  supply,  which  promise  was  confirmed  by  Mon- 
seigneur  Puisieux."  On  August  29,  de  Caen  left  Tadousac  with 
his  cargo  of  furs  and  the  execrations  of  the  whole  community. 
He  was  followed  on  September  7  by  Pontgrave  and  Father 
George,  who  carried  with  him  a  bill  of  grievances  from  the 
colony.  Tlie  document  is  given  in  full  by  Sagard,  who 
says :  "The  .Sieur  de  Champlain  and  all  the  principal  French 
inhabitants  of  Canada"  (whence  we  may  infer  that  there 
were  at  that  period  other  foreigners  in  the  colony  beside 
the  unfortunate  Scotchman  who  had  been  summarily  carried 
ofif  by  Satan's  imps),  "desirous  of  finding  some  relief  from  the 
confusion  which  distracted  the  colony,  had  called  a  public  meeting. 
It  deputed  the  Reverend  Father  George  to  make  to  his  Majesty 
their  humble  remonstrances,  trusting  to  his  well-known  prudence 


PETITION    OF  THE  IN  IIAI^ITANTS.  I53 

to    do    ill    their    behalf    whatever    he    might    consider    to    be 
most  conducive  to  the  welfare  and  advancement  of  tlie  colony." 
The   meeting   then   adopted    the    following    resolution :      "Know 
All  Men,  That  on  the  i8th  of  August  in  the  Year  of  Grace    1621, 
in  the  Reign  of,   etc.,  etc.,   with   the   consent  of  the   said   Lieu- 
tenant, a  general  meeting  of  all  the  French  inhabitants  of  New 
France  was  called  for  the  purpose  of  devising  some  relief  from 
the  ruin  and  desolation  which  threatened  this  whole  country,  and 
for  finding  some  means  of  preserving  the  Catholic,  Apostolic  and 
Roman  religion  in  its  purity,  the  authority  of  the  King  in  its 
inviolability,  etc. ;  it  has  therefore  been  Resolved,  unanimously,  to 
choose  a  representative  from  this  meeting  as  a  deputy  from  the 
whole  company  who  will  lay  before  the  feet  of  his  Majesty  in  all 
humility  a   statement  of  the  condition  of  the  country,  and   will 
describe  the  disorders  which  have  distracted  it,  notably  during 
this  year  of  1621.     And  that  this  deputy  also  visit  his  Lord  the 
Viceroy  in  order  to  explain  to  him  the  state  of  disorder  and  so- 
licit   his    support    in    their    complaint."      The    meeting    selected 
Father  George  to  lay  their  cause  before  the  King,  and  authorized 
him  to  employ,  if  necessary,  one  or  two  advocates  to  plead  their 
cause    before   the    Council    and   the   courts,    and    take    measures 
to  secure  the  safety  of  their  delegate  while  engaged  in  prosecut- 
ing his  mission.     The  resolution  drawn  up  by  the  Sieur  Baptiste 
Guers,    Commissaire,    is    a    masterpiece    of   legal    verbiage,    and 
concludes   with   the   following:   "Given   at   Quebec,  la   Nouvelle 
France,  over  the  signature  of  the  principal  inhabitants,  acting 
for  the  whole,  who,  for  the  purpose  of  further  authentication,  have 
prayed  the  Very  Reverend  Father  in  God,  Denis  Jamay,  Com- 
missaire  des   Religieux   in   this   land,   to  afilix   his   ecclesiastical 
seal  on  the  date  and  year  hereinbefore  named."     Signed — Cham- 
plain  ;    Fr^res,   Denis   Jamay,    Commissaire ;   Joseph    Le    Caron ; 
Hebert,  Procnreur  du  Roi ;  Gilbert  Courseron,  Lieutenant  du  Pre- 
vost ;  Boulle,  Pierre  Reye,  Le  Tardif ,  J.  Le  Groux,  P.  Desportes, 
Nicolas,  GrefKier  of  the  jurisdiction  of  Quebec,  and  clerk  of  the 
assembly ;  Guers,  Commissionne  de  Monseigneur  le  Viceroy. 

The  calling  of  a  town  meeting  and  the  titles  afifixed  to  the 
signatures  express  eloquently  the  eflfort  Champlain  had  made  to 


154  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

create  out  of  the  scanty  and  incongruous  elements  with  which  he 
had  to  deal  an  organized  civil  community.  There  must  have  been 
a  court  of  justice  of  which  Nicolas  was  clerk,  Champlain 
himself  probably  being  judge.  Nicolas  was  therefore  by 
right,  and  probably  l)y  virtue  of  his  education,  selected  as 
secretary  of  the  meeting.  The  name  which  follows  those  of  the 
Governor  and  the  priests  was  that  of  Hebert,  the  first  well-to-do 
immigrant,  who  had  been  now  three  years  in  the  country,  and 
whom  Champlain  had  appointed  Procureur  du  Roi,  Crown  Coun- 
sel. Then  came  that  of  Courseron,  Lieutenant  du  Prevost — in  or- 
dinary parlance,  the  constable.  Small  as  the  population  yet  'was, 
the  machinery  of  civilization  had  been  introduced,  and  the  people 
were  being  educated  in  its  use.  This  miniature  civil  government 
Champlain  must  have  organized  after  his  proclamation  of  the 
sovereignty  of  the  French  Crown,  under  himself  as  Lieutenant, 
the  previous  spring. 

The  stagnation  of  the  colony,  and  now  an  acute  business 
rivalry  worse  than  stagnation,  were,  of  course,  primarily  due 
to  the  colonial  policy  of  the  mother  land.  The  French  Crown, 
in  refusing  to  incur  expense  in  fostering  colonization,  followed 
the  lines  laid  down  for  Henry  IV.  by  his  famous  minister,  the 
Due  de  Sully,  who  in  these  colonization  schemes  could  not  see  any 
immediate  profit  to  the  treasury.  Worried  by  his  master's  extra- 
vagances and  shameless  expenditure  on  his  pleasures,  he  classed 
his  colonization  enterprises  in  the  same  category,  for  in  1603  he 
said :  "The  colony  that  was  sent  to  Canada  this  year  was  among 
the  number  of  those  things  of  which  I  disapprove.  No  riches  can 
come  from  the  new  world  north  of  the  40th  latitude.  His  Majesty 
gave  the  command  of  this  expedition  to  the  Sieur  de  Monts." 

England,  Holland  and  France  all  adopted  and  followed  the 
same  policy.  All  three  created  trading  companies  to  develop  the 
resources  of  those  sections  of  the  North  American  continent  which 
they  severally  undertook  to  colonize,  and  to  secure  possession  to 
the  parent  State  by  actual  occupation  of  the  appropriated  slice.  But 
the  conditions  of  the  original  charters  varied  as  widely  as  the 
fortunes  of  the  companies.  The  political  tendencies  of  the  parent 
Stat^  were  expressed  in  the  original  instruments,  and  the  result- 


OTHER   COLONIAL   EXPERIMENTS.  155 

ing  companies,  with  their  colonial  progenies,  continued  to  reflect 
more  or  less  accnrately  the  development  of  ideas  in  Europe.  Ex- 
ception may  be  claimed  in  the  case  of  the  Dutch  colonies  on  the 
Hudson  and  the  Delaware,  which  hardly  survived  long  enough 
to  outlive  the  defects  of  their  origin  in  a  close,  highly  privileged 
trading  company,  and  to  grow  into  a  political  community  deriving 
life  and  inspiration  from  the  parent  State. 

Despite  the  liberal  representative  government  which  the  Dutch 
enjoyed  at  home,  their  colony  of  New  Netherlands,  created  under 
the  charter  of  the  West  India  Company  in  1623,  was  as  com- 
pletely an  appanage  of  this  trading  company  as  was  New  France 
of  the  selfish  commercial  associations  which  for  half  a  century 
carried  on  the  farce  of  pretending  to  colonize  it.  The  directors 
used  their  knowledge  and  influence  to  secure,  by  purchase  from 
the  Indians,  large  tracts  of  the  best  and  most  available  lands  with- 
in the  sphere  of  the  company's  operations.  Then  these  padrones 
imported  laborers  to  cultivate  their  estates,  but  the  immigiants 
were  servants — not  independent  adventurers,  bent  on  self-better- 
ment by  acquiring  and  improving  their  own  lands.  It  was  no 
more  to  the  interest  of  the  Dutch  Trading  Company,  whose  ar- 
ticle of  export  was  furs,  to  fell  the  forests  and  settle  the  lands, 
with  consequent  destruction  of  the  fur-bearing  animals,  than 
it  was  to  the  advantage  of  the  Canadian  trading  companies,  or 
subsequently  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Company,  to  destroy  the  sources 
of  their  wealth.  It  was  nearly  twenty  years  after  the  first  settle- 
ment of  the  Hudson  before  anv  pretense  of  popular  government 
was  allowed  to  the  colonists  of  the  North  or  South  rivers,  or 
before  the  monopoly  of  the  company  was  abrogated.  Then  colo- 
nists of  every  hue  poured  in,  for  the  population  was  augmented, 
not  only  from  Europe,  but  by  the  discontented  from  the  English 
colonies  lying  to  the  north  and  to  the  south. 

The  original  Virginia  Companv  was  an  English  trading  com- 
pany, but  organized  on  very  different  lines  from  the  French  and 
the  Dutch.  An  Act  was  passed  in  1606,  incorporating  two 
companies  under  one  charter ;  the  one.  the  London  Company,  for 
founding  a  colony  in  south  Virginia  :  the  other,  the  Plymouth 
Company,  for  founding  a  like  colony  in  north  Virginia.     The 


156  gUEIJKC    I.X    THE   SENEXTEENTH    CEXTUKY. 

first  in  the  field  was  the  i'lyniouth  Company,  which,  under 
the  leatlership  of  Sir  John  Popham.  Sir  Fernando  Gorges, 
and  others,  equipped  the  "Richard  of  Plymouth,"  and  made 
a  landing  on  the  coast  of  ]\Iaine.  The  death  of  Topham 
led  to  the  speedy  abandonment  of  the  enterprise,  and  the 
north  Mrginia  scheme  was  never  again  undertaken  under 
the  company's  auspices.  The  second  detachment  sailed  to 
plant  a  colony  in  south  Virginia  in  December  of  the  same 
year.  The  endeavors  of  the  London  Company  to  establish 
a  plantation  in  south  Virginia,  if  not  successful  in  the  man- 
ner contemplated  by  the  founders,  was  fruitful  of  consequences 
which  the  most  far-seeing  could  hardly  have  contemplated.  The 
charter  was  the  first  colonial  constitution  conceived  by  Engli.sh 
statesmen.  If  it  emanated  from  the  fanciful  brain  of  James  I., 
its  provisions  must  certainly  have  been  suggested  by  a  more 
liberal  mind  than  that  of  a  Stuart.  The  colonists  were  not 
to  be  endowed  with  representative  government  as  we  un- 
derstand it ;  but.  while  a  court  in  London,  nominated  by  the 
Crown,  was  to  exercise  control  of  the  several  plantations,  which 
might  compose  so  many  distinct  colonies  within  the  sphere  of 
the  company's  vast  domain,  extending  from  the  34th  to  the 
45th  parallel  of  north  latitude,  each  colony  might  elect  its  own 
council.  The  company  was  a  trading  company,  organized  with 
hope  of  gain,  but  in  the  hearts  of  some  of  its  members  a  desire  to 
curb  the  power  of  Spain  was  uppermost,  while  others  were  moved 
by  a  missionary  spirit. 

In  this  first  attempt  to  raise  a  child  of  the  State  at  a 
distance  from  the  parent,  far  more  liberty  and  rights  of 
self-control  were  given  than  we  have  seen  bestowed  on  the  few 
colonists  of  New  France,  either  in  Acadia  or  on  the  St.  Law- 
rence. The  settlers  of  the  \^irginia  Company  and  their  children 
forever  were  to  enjoy  all  the  liberties,  franchises  and  immunities 
enjoyed  by  Englishmen  in  England,  but  subject  to  a  fatal  flaw: 
"The  land  was  to  be  held  by  the  Crown,  as  in  our  manor  of  East 
Greenwich  in  the  County  of  Kent,  in  free  and  common  socage 
only,  and  not  in  capite."  Under  the  rules  of  the  Company  the 
first    Virginia    colony    was    a    communistic    community.      There 


THE  VIRGINIA   COLONY.  157 

were  to  be  no  individual  interests,  but  all  produce  was  to  go 
into  a  common  stock  in  which  the  colonists  and  the  promoters  were 
to  share.  All  personal  motive  and  personal  exertion  were  to  be  sub- 
ordinate to  the  common  good.  In  this  case,  as  in  such  com- 
munities generally,  the  labor  of  the  many  simply  went  to  augment 
the  profits  of  those  who,  by  fair  means  or  foul,  obtained  control. 
This  was  one,  but  only  one,  cause  of  the  failure  of  the  original 
company.  The  personnel  of  the  colony  was  composed  of  ma- 
terial ill  fitted  for  pioneer  life.  Among  the  105  left  by  Cap- 
tain Newport  on  James  Island,  29  are  designated  as  gentlemen, 
and  12  as  laborers.  It  had  been  better  if  these  numbers 
had  been  reversed.  The  site  for  the  settlement  was  ill  chosen. 
A  low,  swampy  island  was  selected  on  the  James  River,  and 
on  it  Jamestown  was  founded.  All  that  remains  of  it  is  a 
crumbling  wall  in  a  farm,  with  whose  mould  is  mingled  the  dust  of 
thousands  of  early  fever-stricken  settlers.  It  is  a  sad  story  of  mis- 
rule and  bad  judgment.  Through  the  energy  and  tact  of  John 
Smith  the  colony  was  barely  saved  from  annihilation  till  the  arri- 
val, in  1608,  of  Archer  and  Radclifife  with  500  fresh  visionaries. 
This  meant,  however,  500  more  mouths  to  feed,  and  famine  de- 
vastated the  colony  from  1608  to  16 10.  Nevertheless,  despite  the 
evil  fate  which  befell  the  unfortunate  laborers  as  well  as  the  finan- 
cial backers  of  the  company  of  1606,  so  enthusiastic  were  people 
of  all  classes  in  England  in  favor  of  the  Virginia  scheme, 
that,  when  the  company  was  reorganized  in  1609,  not  less  than 
659  persons  of  all  ranks  and  professions  and  66  trade  guilds 
became  purchasers  of  stock.  Herein  we  see  once  more  a  marked 
contrast  to  the  indifference  of  the  French  people  over  their  colo- 
nization ventures.  The  new  company  enjoyed  a  wider  measure 
of  self-government,  but  prosperity  did  not  actually  dawn  till, 
mainly  through  the  exertion  of  Sir  Edwin  Sandys,  a  grant  was 
obtained  in  November,  1618,  of  "The  Great  Charter  or  Commis- 
sion of  Privileges,  Orders  and  Laws."  Under  it  the  land  of  the 
colony,  heretofore  held  in  common,  could  be  held  in  severalty, 
whereby  individual  incentive,  or — let  us  admit  with  the  socialists 
— individual  selfishness,  w^as  called  into  play.  At  the  same  time  a 
representative  government,  for  the  first  time  in  the  New  World, 


158  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

was  conferred  on  the  settlers.  In  1620  the  colony  passeu  irom 
the  control  of  the  company  to  that  of  the  Crown,  so  far  as  ap- 
pointing the  officials  of  the  government  was  concerned.  Thus  in 
the  same  year,  16 18,  in  which  Champlain  was  wearily  and  vainly 
arguing  with  the  associates  to  carry  out  their  promises  of  coloniza- 
tion on  the  St.  Lawrence,  and  trying  with  no  better  success  to 
induce  the  government  to  compel  the  company  to  fulfill  its  pledges, 
Virginia,  after  twelve  years  of  more  terrible  viscissitudes  than  had 
befallen  the  little  band  of  traders  and  traffickers  on  the  St.  Law- 
rence, was  about  to  inaugurate  the  most  momentous  experiment 
in  free  government  ever  made.  Mark  the  result:  by  the  date — 
1622 — which  we  have  reached  in  our  history  of  the  Quebec 
colony,  the  population  of  \'irginia  had  grown  to  about  four  thou- 
sand, while  that  of  Canada  was  only  sixty. 

Already  for  two  years  another  group  of  Englishmen  had 
been  struggling  for  life  on  the  barren  shores  of  Massachusetts. 
They  had  been  impelled  to  seek  the  New  World  by  the  im- 
perative craving  for  freedom.  The  motives,  therefore,  which 
had  emboldened  them  to  land  and  undertake  the  almost  hopeless 
task  of  winning  an  existence  from  the  Plymouth  sands,  were 
of  a  higher  order  than  those  which  inspired  the  adventurers  of  the 
James  River.  Trade  and  its  attendant  gain  had  not  been  the 
purpose  of  this  migration.  But,  like  the  Huguenots  of  France, 
they  brought  to  bear  on  business  the  courage  which  had  sustained 
them  in  venturing  to  differ  from  accepted  opinions ;  and  the  same 
independence  of  thought  which  impelled  them  to  frame  for 
themselves  a  new  ecclesiastical  polity  made  them  the  most 
shrewd  and  intelligent  merchants  of  the  Western  Continent.  In 
politics  they  brought  over  from  England,  and  from  the  Dutch 
Republic,  views  and  sympathies  the  very  reverse  of  those  of 
the  settlers  on  the  St.  Lawrence,  and  far  in  advance  of  those 
of  the  majority  of  their  countrymen  on  the  other  side  of  the 
.A.tlantic.  These  intensely  Puritanic  and  strenuous  groups,  orig- 
inally gathered  around  their  churches  and  pastors,  developed 
into  the  most  democratic  people  of  the  whole. world.  We  see, 
therefore,  the  three  communities,  or  four — if  we  include  the 
Dutch — working  out  simultaneously  and  side  by  side  the  prob- 


THE  BIRTH  OF  NEW   ENGLAND.  1 59 

lems  of  colonization.  The  differences  they  exhibited  in  char- 
acter, methods,  and  results  afford  most  instructive  contrasts. 
The  French  in  Canada,  under  a  paternal  government  and  a 
despotic  church,  fettered  by  the  privileges  bestowed  upon  one  com- 
mercial company  after  another,  never  seemed  to  fret  seriously 
under  the  yoke,  and  certainly  never  struggled  for  independ- 
ence, but  developed  on  the  other  hand  certain  distinctive  na- 
tional traits  which  became  so  ingrained  in  their  character 
that  they  still  not  only  exist,  but  constitute  a  force  which 
it  is  unwise  to  overlook  or  und£restimate.  The  English 
in  opening  Virginia,  while  moved  by  a  fierce  determination  to 
check  the  expansion  of  Spain  and  the  spread  of  the  Spanish 
ecclesiastical  system,  were  at  the  same  time  trying  an  experi- 
ment in  sociology  wiiich  failed  so  emphatically  that  it  never 
was  repeated.  This  stirring  seventeenth  century  was,  indeed,  less 
an  age  of  renaissance  than  of  revolution,  when  men  were  more 
ready  than  they  have  ever  been  since  to  carry  theories  into  actual 
practice.  And  so  the  Virginia  colonists,  having  freedom  of  ac- 
tion and  being  endowed  with  common  sense  and  a  rugged  though 
teachable  spirit,  made  haste  to  abandon  their  communistic  theories 
and  practices  as  soon  as  these  were  found  unprofitable.  They  still 
remained  more  ardent  political  theorists  than  even  their  Puritani- 
cal fellow  colonists  in  the  North.  They  sustained  during  colonial 
times  a  bold  opposition  to  all  infringement  of  what  they  considered 
their  rights  as  British  citizens ;  and,  when  the  rupture  came,  im- 
pressed indelibly  their  theories  of  government  on  the  constitution 
of  the  new  nation.  They  were  the  furthest  away  from  Canada, 
and  therefore  their  example  was  less  obnoxious  than  that  of  New 
England  to  the  Canadian  governors  and  the  Canadian  clergy ;  but, 
from  the  time  of  Argall's  piratical  descent  on  the  J^'suit  colonies 
of  Acadia  till  the  conquest  of  Canada,  there  was  in  Virginia  as  un- 
compromising a  hatred  of  the  French  system  of  arbitrary  govern- 
ment and  of  the  French  ecclesiastical  policy  as  in  Massachusetts 
itself. 

In  New  England,  bordering  on  Canada,  we  see  a  group  of 
colonies  created  under  the  influence  of  political  views  at  diame- 
trical variance  from  those  prevailing  on  the  St.  Lawrence,  cspeci- 


l6o  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

ally  after  the  expulsion  of  the  Huguenots;  and  with  theological  be- 
liefs still  more  opposed  to  the  creed  of  the  French  inhabitants, 
though  inculcated  by  a  clergy  which  would  have  exacted  as  im- 
plicit obedience  as  Rome  itself,  if  their  followers  would  but  have 
yielded  it.  The  colonies  carried  on  a  ceaseless  struggle  for  un- 
trammelled trade,  untrammelled  creed,  untrammelled  self-gov- 
ernment ;  for  everything,  in  fact,  which  was  denied  the  French 
colonist,  and  which  he  was  taught  it  was  rebellion,  if  not  sacri- 
lege, to  demand.  The  repeated  raids  on  each  other's  territory,  and 
the  inhuman  Indian  reprisals  made  on  both  sides  of  the  frontier, 
so  envenomed  the  feeling  of  Canada  and  New  England  toward 
one  another,  that  a  dispassionate  estimate  of  each  other's  char- 
acter and  aims  was  impossible.  There  was  thus  a  ready  made 
prejudice  on  the  part  of  the  French-Canadian  against  New  Eng- 
land's method  of  government  which  efifectually  prevented  his  im- 
bibing any  New  England  notions  of  constitutional  liberty.  The 
wonderful  prosperity  of  all  these  seaboard  colonies,  thotigh  con- 
trasting vividly  with  his  own  poverty,  does  not  seem ,  strange  to 
say,  to  have  excited  the  fear,  still  less  the  envy,  of  the  French- 
Canadian,  so  completely  were  his  will  and  intelligence  in  the  keep- 
ing of  his  civil  and  ecclesiastical  superiors.  Nevertheless,  little 
more  than  a  century  was  to  pass  before  descendants  of  the  group 
of  fever-stricken  settlers  in  the  swamps  of  James  Island,  and  those 
of  the  shivering  pilgrims  of  Plymouth  rock,  were  to  give  the  im- 
pulse to  England's  effort  which  substantially  obliterated  French 
power  in  the  New  World. 

The  same  opposing  tendencies  prevailed  in  these  neighboring 
colonies,  French  and  English,  from  first  to  last :  on  one  side  of 
the  line  bureaucratic  absolutism  and  meek  submission  to  the 
rule  of  the  mother  country  and  her  agents ;  on  the  other 
side  of  the  line,  opposition  to  all  control,  an  almost  unreason- 
able resentment  against  the  remotest  suggestion  of  domination  by 
England,  and  a  lurking  d-etermination,  distinctly  felt  long  before 
it  was  expressed,  to  throw  off  all  allegiance  to  her.  The  English 
colonial  and  commercial  policy  was  so  narrow  and  unjust,  from 
our  present  point  of  view,  as  to  furnish  plausible  reasons  for  the 
ill-disguised  desire  for  separation  ;  but  it  was  liberal  in  comparison 


NEW    ENGLAND   AND   NEW   FRANCE.  l6l 

with  that  which  France  imposed  on  her  colonies,  and  not  more 
oppressive  than  much  of  England's  sectional  legislation  at  home. 
In  fact  the  hroader  views  wliich  the  opposition  of  the  colonies 
to  imperial  selfishness  impressed  on  the  British  system  liave  in 
Britain  itself  borne  riper  and  more  wholesome  fruit  than  in 
the  lands  where  they  had  their  birth. 

New  England  and  New  France — how  different  would 
have  been  the  course  of  American  history  if  these  two  communi- 
ties, born  almost  simultaneously,  could  have  declined  to  share  the 
quarrels  of  the  rest  of  the  family,  and  determined  to  emulate  each 
other  in  creating  in  this  western  world  a  new,  if  not  a  higher, 
civilization,  adapted  to  the  altered  and  more  favorable  circum- 
stances under  which  they  were  placed.  Unfortunately,  their 
courses  diverged  from  the  very  first.  At  every  step  of  their  history 
we  come  upon  traces  of  the  deplorable  results  of  unchristian 
antagonism  and  bitter  hatred,  where  there  should  have  been 
only  vigorous  rivalry ;  of  war,  where  the  interests  of  both  would 
have  been  best  subserved  by  peace.  The  English  colonists 
steered  whither  their  immediate  interests  pointed,  guided  by  no 
strong  national  af^liation  to  the  mother  country.  To  New 
France,  Old  France  was  from  the  first,  and  always  remained,  an 
inflexible  though  kindly  disposed  parent,  imposing  rules  on  her 
children  and  repressing  all  self-assertion  as  inexorably  as  a  French 
father.  The  French-Canadian  remained  a  Frenchman  in  a  much 
closer  sense  than  the  American  colonist  remained  an  Englishman. 

But  to  return.  We  left  Champlain  in  the  autumn  of  1621, 
with  his  young  wife  in  the  tumble-down  habitation,  which  must 
have  been  uncomfortably  crowded,  if  most  of  the  fifty  inhabit- 
ants of  the  post  lived  within  its  walls.  He  had  not  progressed 
sufficiently  with  the  Chateau  of  St.  Louis  to  render  it  habitable, 
and  the  only  separate  house  to  which  any  reference  is  made  is 
that  of  Hebert.  With  a  proud  reserve,  Champlain  seldom  dwells 
^n  the  hardships  he  was  personally  exposed  to,  and  still  less 
(m  those  his  family  suffered.  It  was  not  until  he  was  returning 
with  his  wife  and  household  effects  in  the  autumn  of  1624,  "after 
having  hibernated,"  as  he  says,  "almost  five  years  in  want  and 
discomfort,"   that   he   vents   his   indignation   at   the   neglect   the 


l62  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

company  had  shown,  not  only  of  the  comfort  and  safety  of  its 
employees,  but  of  its  own  interests.  During  these  years  nothing 
of  importance  occurred,  and  the  colony — still  unworthy  of  the 
name — gained  neither  in  numbers  nor  in  public  spirit.  From 
the  incidental  references  made  to  the  company's  affairs,  we  may 
judge  that,  from  a  mercantile  point  of  view,  they  did  not 
prosper ;  for  the  Basque  and  the  Rochelle  traders,  as  well  as  the 
Spaniards  and  Flemings,  impudently  and  with  impunity  poached 
on  their  reserves,  and  with  armed  ships,  which  neither  Cham- 
plain,  as  Governor,  nor  the  officers  of  the  company,  had  men 
or  weapons  to  resist,  defiantly  sailed  the  gulf  and  river  up  to 
Grosse  Island,  fishing,  and  trading  with  the  Indians.  The  feud 
between  the  two  companies,  which  had  worried  Champlain  in 
the  summer  of  1621,  and  been  so  disastrous  to  both  concerns, 
was  adjusted  in  France  during  the  following  winter  by  a  con- 
solidation ;  the  old  company  accepting  a  five-twelfth  interest  in 
the  new  corporation.  The  servants  of  the  company  and  the  King's 
Lieutenants  were  meanwhile  staving  off  famine  through  the  skill 
of  the  Indian  moose  hunters,  and  Champlain  was  conciliating  the 
savages ;  trying  to  tempt  some  of  them  to  settle  down  as  farm- 
ers; bribing  their  head  men  with  titles  and  baubles;  forming 
schemes  of  exploration  in  the  interior  which  he  was  doomed  never 
to  conduct ;  and  using  his  influence  in  the  laudable  task  of  healing 
the  feud  between  the  Iroquois  and  the  Huron  and  Algonquin  allies 
of  the  French. 

The  summer  of  1622  was  well  advanced  before  his  old 
comrade,  Pontgrave,  and  Santein,  a  representative  of  de  Caens 
and  the  new  company,  arrived  with  news  of  the  consoli- 
dation of  the  old  and  the  new  companies.  It  was  the  middle  of 
July  before  de  Caen  himself  appeared,  eager  to  reach  Three  Rivers 
lest  the  Indians  should  scatter,  disappointed  of  their  annual  barter 
and  their  annual  debauch.  He  left  a  certain  Hebert  in  charge  of 
his  ship  at  Tadousac,  where  an  unseemly  dispute  occurred  about 
religious  precedence,  eminently  characteristic  of  the  time..  The 
primitive  apostolic  rule  of  self-abasement  and  preference  for  the 
lower  place  did  not  characterize  the  practices  of  either  party.  It 
seems  that  de  Caen,   when  on  board,   held   prayers  for  his   co- 


REBUILDING   OF   THE    "HABITATION."  T63 

religionists  in  the  cabin,  and  the  Cathohcs  perforce  performed 
their  devotions  in  the  forecastle.  Hebert  when  left  in  charge, 
though  himself  a  Catholic,  adhered  to  de  Caen's  orders,  but  when 
de  la  Ralde  came  on  board  and  assumed  command,  he'  reversed 
the  order  and  turned  the  Huguenots  into  the  forecastle  to  pray, 
and  promoted  the  Catholics  to  the  cabin.  The  dispute  waxed  hot, 
and  the  good  offices  of  the  Recollet  Fathers  were  taxed  to  as- 
suage the  quarrel.  As  the  opinion  was  decidedly  expressed  that 
Hebert's  action  was  most  unreasonable,  the  Huguenots  had  to 
cultivate  their  piety  as  best  they  could  in  the  forecastle. 

The  gentle  RecoUets  doubtless  loved  peace,  but,  if  we  may 
judge  from  Champlain's  implications,  they  were  a  trifle  too  fond 
of  their  ease.  We  must,  however,  recollect  that  as  this  part  of 
Champlain's  narrative  was  probably  edited  by  the  Jesuits,  the 
motives,  if  not  the  acts,  of  the  monks  may  have  been  slightly  dis- 
torted in  the  telling.  What  wonder  if  gossip  abounded  in  the 
habitation  during  the  long  winter  months !  And  what  subject  of 
gossip  could  be  so  racy  as  the  lives  and  doings  of  the  priests  in 
their  secluded  monastery  on  the  St.  Charles!  If  they  would  isolate 
themselves,  they  must  take  the  consequences,  and  be  misunder- 
stood and  misrepresented.  The  Governor  does,  it  is  true,  give 
them  credit  for  being  zealous  gardeners  ;  "but  well  they  might  be," 
he  said,  "for  they  had  naught  else  to  do  but  plant  the  seed  and 
watch  it  grow\"  The  company's  servants  were,  however,  even 
more  incorrigible  than  the  Fathers.  They  could  not  be  induced 
either  to  sow  or  to  pray,  and  it  required  much  vehement  urging  to 
get  them  to  do  even  such  agricultural  work  as  was  necessary  for 
the  very  preservation  of  the  colony.  In  fact,  no  one  was  stirred  by 
the  impulse  of  self-interest,  and  few  by  religious  enthusiasm. 
It  was  the  company,  the  company,  and  only  the  company ;  and 
then,  as  now,  to  do  as  little  as  possible  for,  and  extort  as  much  as 
possible  from,  the  soulless  corporation  was  every  one's  end  and 
aim. 

Champlain  himself,  on  the  contrary,  despite  neglect  and  broken 
promises,  was  still  enthusiastic.  Pontgrave,  who  was  spending 
the  winter  in  Canada,  was  growing  old  and  gouty,  and  during  the 
whole  spring  of  1623  was  a  burden  on  Champlain's  care,  and  the 


j64  QUEBEC   IX   THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

recipient,  we  may  well  believe,  of  the  tender  ministrations  of  the 
Chatelaine  of  the  habitation.  The  colony  was  not  strengthened  by 
the  accession  of  any  sturdy  settlers,  but  two  more  priests,  Father 
Nicholas'  V'iel  and  Father  Gabriel  Sagard,  arrived  in  1623,  and 
henceforth,  for  seven  years  we  have  in  Sagard's  history  the  testi- 
mony of  an  eye  witness  of  what  occurred  on  the  St.  Lawrence. 
It  was  the  middle  of  July  before  de  Caen  reached  Quebec,  and  as 
the  Indians  were  already  due  on  the  upper  river,  he  hurried  west, 
accompanied  b\'  Champlain. 

After  their  return  to  Quebec,  de  Caen  and  Champlain  made 
a  trip  to  Cap  Tourmente,  to  inspect  the  beaver  meadows,  where 
they  found  natural  hay  enough  for  all  the  animals.  A  survey 
was  next  made  of  the  old  habitation.  All  their  masons  and  car- 
penters were  called  in  as  experts,  and  the  decision  was  unani- 
mously reached  that  the  woodwork  of  the  old  barn  was  irretriev- 
ably rotten,  but  that  it  was  worth  while  making  a  door  from  with- 
out into  the  stone  cellar,  and  abolishing  the  trap  door  from  the 
magazine  above,  so  as  to  protect  the  liquor  in  the  wine  cellar 
from  illicit  raids.  With  such  trifles  is  the  opening  scene  of  the 
great  drama  of  the  French  regime  in  the  New  World  occupied. 

Pontgrave  returned  with  the  Sieur  de  Caen  to  France  in  or- 
der to  seek  medical  relief  for  his  ailments.  It  was  still  only 
September,  and  therefore  there  was  time  to  prepare  plans  of  the 
new  habitation,  which  was  on  a  much  more  pretentious  scale  than 
the  crazy  structure  it  was  to  supplant,  and  to  commence  its  erec- 
tion. It  was  to  have  a  frontage  of  280  feet.  It  was  to  be  defended 
by  a  tower  at  each  corner,  and  a  ravelin  was  to  be  constructed  with 
its  apex  to  the  river.  A  ditch  and  drawbridge  were  to  afford 
additional  protection.  It  was  never  completed  on  Champlain's 
plan.  Only  two  towers  were  erected.  They  stood  on  the 
present  Rue  de  Notre  Dame,  one  at  the  corner  of  the  Rue  sous 
le  Fort,  a  few  feet  from  the  door  of  the  present  Church  of  Notre 
Dame  des  \^ictoires  (see  note  to  Laverdiere's  Champlain,  page 
1053).  Meanwhile  the  castle  of  St.  Louis  was  being  erected  on 
the  cliff  above  the  habitation.  To  facilitate  passage  between  it 
and  the  habitation  a  better  trail — for  no  cart  had  yet  reached  New 
France — was  cut  and  graded,  following  probably  the  present  Rue 


NEW   TROUBLES.  165 

de  la  Montague.  The  winter  was  a  long  one.  Material  was  col- 
lected for  both  the  new  habitation  and  the  fort,  which  was  ap- 
proaching completion,  when  on  the  20th  of  April  a  furious  gust 
of  wind  carried  away  its  roof  bodily.  The  building  was  deemed 
too  high,  and  Champlain  therefore  cut  off  the  second  story  and 
made  all  haste  to  cover  in  the  mutilated  structure ;  for  with  the 
Chateau  unroofed  and  a  dilapidated  habitation,  he  and  the  colony 
were  in  danger  of  being  left  without  either  fort  or  homestead ; 
more  especially  as  the  same  gale  had  torn  down  the  gable  of  He- 
bert's  house,  the  only  other  dwelling  at  the  post  then  or  up  to  the 
date  of  Sagard's  leaving  Canada.  On  the  6th  of  May,  1624,  Cham- 
plain  had  dug  the  foundation  of  his  new  house,  and  the  founda- 
tion stone  was  laid  carefully  with  the  date  and  the  arms  of 
France  and  those  of  Monsieur  de  Montmorency,  and  Champlain's 
name  as  Lieutenant.  This  stone,  according  to  Ferland,  was 
found  while  excavating  on  the  site  of  the  magazine,  and  was 
built  in  above  the  door  of  a  house  adjoining  the  Lower  Town 
chapel.  The  house  was  burned  in  1854,  and  the  inscription  dis- 
appeared. 

On  the  2nd  of  June  a  shallop  came  in  with  the  news  of  the 
arrival  of  a  sixty  ton  sloop  at  Tadousac,  bringing  much  needed 
provisions.  The  captain  said  that  de  Caen  was  to  follow, 
but  to  Champlain's  annoyance  he  brought  no  mail  from  those  in 
authority  or  from  de  Caen  himself — only  an  unofficial  letter  from 
le  Gendre,  one  of  the  unofficial  partners  of  the  company.  It  was 
the  nth  of  July  before  de  Caen  entered  the  harbor  with  tw'O 
schooners  laden  with  the  usual  goods  for  the  Indian  fairs.  De 
Caen's  lieutenant,  de  la  Ralde,  had  been  all  the  spring  in  the 
Gulf  at  his  headquarters  on  the  Island  of  Miscou,  near  the  mouth 
of  the  Bay  des  Chaleurs,  fishing  and  trafficking  with  the  Indians 
there,  while  the  more  important  branch  of  the  company's  busi- 
ness— the  fur  trade  with  the  Indians  of  the  Lakes — was  being 
neglected,  and  in  danger  of  slipping  into  hostile  channels,  to  the 
serious  detriment  of  the  colony's  prosperity. 

Another  catise  of  worry  to  the  Governor  was  the  conduct  of 
the  French  who  had  accompanied  the  Hurons  to  their  village 
the   summer   previous.     One  had   died,   eight   had   remained   on 


l66  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

the  Georgian  Bay  with  Father  Nicolas,  and  four  only  had  re- 
turned with  Father  Joseph  and  Brother  Gabriel,  when  they  de- 
scended with  their  savage  flock  to  seek  some  needful  supplies.  Du 
Vernay,  who  brought  the  first  news,  said  that  the  French  had  been 
ill-used  by  the  Indians,  but  Champlain  attributed  their  treatment 
to  their  own  misdeeds.  Brother  Gabriel  Sagard  himself  ar- 
rived a  fortnight  later  with  a  very  serious  indictment  against  his 
countrymen.  The  truth  was  that  the  French  had  taken  Indian 
wives  without  the  benediction  of  the  Church,  and  were  clearly 
lapsing,  without  any  effort  at  self-restraint,  into  a  life  of  semi- 
barbarism.  Already  about  one-fifth  of  the  whole  French  popula- 
tion had  adopted  Indian  manners  and  Indian  wives.  De  Caen 
was  late  this  year  in  coming  out  with  his  merchandise,  but  be- 
fore he  returned  to  Old  France  he  made  a  tour  of  inspection 
of  the  country  around  Cap  Tourmente,  the  Island  of  Orleans  and 
the  adjacent  islands,  which  he  claimed  had  been  given  him  by 
Monseigneur,  though  Monseigneur's  lieutenant  had  not  been  no- 
tified of  the  grant.  De  Caen  was  not  of  the  true  faith,  and 
in  regenerated  Canada  his  territorial  claim,  if  ever  put  forth,  was 
certainly  not  confirmed.  Upon  a  careful  consideration  of  the 
whole  situation  Champlain  decided  to  return  to  France  with  his 
family,  and  make  one  more  effort  to  have  the  colony  es- 
tablished on  a  more  satisfactory  footing.  He  left  the  hab- 
itafioii  so  nearly  completed  that  fifteen  days'  more  work  should 
have  sufficed.  The  nephew  of  Sieur  Guillaume  de  Caen,  the 
Sieur  Emery  de  Caen,  was  left  in  charge  of  the  company's  af- 
fairs, and  Champlain  named  him  his  representative — Vice-Gov- 
ernor,  therefore,  over  a  grand  total  of  fifty-one  persons,  including 
men,  women,  boys  and  children.  Whether  the  Recollet  Fathers 
were  counted  in  this  number  is  not  stated — probably  not.  It  was 
the  15th  of  August,  1624,  when  they  sailed  from  Quebec. 

According  to  Le  Clercq,  the  Iroquois  in  this  summer  of  1624, 
during  Champlain's  absence,  after  taking  a  Recollet  Brother — 
Father  Poullain — prisoner  at  the  trading  rendezvous  of  the  Slaut 
St.  Louis,  followed  their  enemie.s,  the  Hurons,  as  far  as  Quebec- 
They  were  afraid  to  attack  the  fort,  but  ascended  the  St.  Charles 
and  assailed  the  Recollet  monastery.    They  were  beaten  back  with 


MADAME   CHAM  PLAIN    RETURNS   TO   FRANCE.  167 

a  loss  of  seven  or  eight  of  their  numl)er,  but  two  on  the  French 
side  died  of  arrow  wounds.  Le  Clercq  tells  us  the  story  on  the 
authority  of  Madame  Couillard,  who  was  in  the  fort  at  the  time, 
but  it  is  strange  so  notable  an  event  should  have  been  passed 
over  by  the  contemporaneous  commentators — Champlain  and 
Sagard.  It  is  therefore  not  impossible  that  Madame  Couillard 
drew  somewhat  on  her  imagination ;  it  v/as  an  imaginative  age. 

Madame  Champlain  sailed  with  her  husband  never  to  return. 
One  would  like  to  get  an  actual  glimpse  at  the  real  life  of  this 
good  woman  during  her  sojurn  in  the  colony.  For  twelve  years 
previously  husband  and  wife  had  -  met  only  after  long  inter- 
vals of  separation,  and.  except  while  he  was  detained  in  i6t2- 
1613  in  France  for  twenty-one  months,  greetings  and  partings 
followed  all  too  closely,  until  the  brave  woman  decided  to  share 
her  husband's  hardships,  and  bury  herself  in  the  forests  and 
snows  of  Canada,  with  no  female  society  but  Madame  Hebert  and 
her  daughter  and  her  own  three  waiting  women.  The  Recollet 
Fathers  must  have  been  welcome  guests  in  her  salo)i  at  the 
habitation,  yet  she  is  not  so  much  as  mentioned  by  the  contem- 
porary historian.  Sagard.  He  goes  into  minute  details  as  to 
the  manner  of  life  of  the  Huron  girls  and  Indian  women,  yet 
refuses  us  a  glimpse  into  the  character  and  the  occupation  of 
the  first  of  that  brilliant  procession  of  French  ladies,  whose 
beauty,  charm  of  manner  and  conversation  have  made  Quebec 
as  famous  as  its  scenery  or  its  commerce.  After  her  husband's 
death  Madame  Champlain  founded  an  Ursuline  convent  at  Meaux, 
into  which  she  retired,  and  the  "Chroniques  de  I'Ordre  des  Ur- 
sulines"  (vie  de  Marie  Helene  Boulle)  gives  a  story  of  her  life, 
drawing  a  portrait  as  unlike  that  of  a  real  woman  as  those  of 
saints — depicted  from  memory  and  imagination — usually  are.  She 
had  abandoned  the  faith  of  her  father  and  adopted  that  of  her  hus- 
band early  in  her  married  life,  soon  after  his  return  to  France  in 
1612-1613.  She  was  doubtless  an  ardent  convert.  She  succeeded 
in  persuading  her  brother  to  return  to  the  ancient  faith,  and, 
when  in  Canada,  was  probably  an  example  of  piety  and  zeal.  But 
her  days  must  have  been  spent,  in  part  at  least,  in  some  other  occu- 
pation than  catechising  Indian  children  in  their  own  tongue,  which 


l68  QUEBEC   IX    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

she  is  said  to  have  learned,  and  nursing  sick  squaws.  What  she  did 
towards  beautifying  her  rooms  in  the  habitation,  towards  infus- 
ing a  ray  of  refinement  into  the  coarse  habits  of  the  trappers, 
soldiers,  masons  and  carpenters  of  the  fort ;  to  what  extent  she 
shared  her  husband's  labors,  whether  she  accompanied  him  in 
his  shorter  journeys  and  helped  him  in  his  clerical  work — all 
these  are  domestic  details  which,  if  narrated,  would  have  shed 
some  rays  of  the  sunshine  of  human  interest  over  those  dreary 
years  of  the  colony's  history.  Champlain's  own  nobility  of  char- 
acter is  displayed  in  nothing  more  conspicuously  than  in  his  own 
self-effacement  and  in  his  reticence  regarding  his  own  doings ;  we 
readily  understand,  therefore,  that  his  native  refinement  would 
revolt  against  any  parade  of  his  wife's  virtues  and  good  deeds. 
In  any  case,  between  the  spleen  or  the  modesty  of  the  priestly 
historian  and  the  chivalry  of  the  soldier  chronicler,  all  that  we 
know  is  that  Madame  Champlain  landed  in  Canada  in  1620,  and 
that  she  re-embarked  in  August,  1624. 


CHAPTER    VIIL 

Dc  Caen's  Company  and  the  Capture  of  Quebec   by 
Kirke.      1624-1629. 

On  disembarking  in  France  in  1624  Chaniplain  at  once  re- 
ported to  the  King  and  the  King's  Viceroy,  the  Due  de  Mont- 
morency. It  was  a  discouraging  tale  he  had  to  tell  of  stagnation 
everywhere  except  in  the  company's  commercial  department. 
Louis  Hebert  was  the  only  colonist  who  was  really  attempting 
agriculture.  A  few — as  Couillard,  Martin,  Pivert,  Desportes,  Du- 
chesne— may  have  turned  their  hands  in  a  desultory  way  to  gar- 
dening, but  the  other  notable  inhabitants  of  the  post,  Marsolet 
Brule,  Hertel,  Nicollet  le  Tardif,  the  three  Godefroys,  were  en- 
gaged exclusively  as  the  company's  employees  in  the  fur  trade 
and  in  dealings  with  the  Indians.  The  scanty  population  re- 
mained stationary.  At  most  two  acres  had  been  cultivated  near 
the  fort.  But  trade  was  fairly  active — 15,000  to  20,000  beaver 
skins  were  exported  annually.  Chaniplain  had  made  a  laudable 
efifort  to  induce  the  Indians  to  cultivate  a  farm  at  the  Beauport 
Flats;  though  if  he  could  not  persuade  his  own  countrymen  to  en- 
gage in  a  pursuit  to  which  they  had  been  accustomed,  there 
was  little  prospect  of  his  succeeding  wath  the  savages.  The 
only  fodder  for  the  few  cattle  was  wild  hay.  Industrial  pursuits 
seemed  to  have  no  attraction  for  the  immigrants,  who  found  the 
Indian  life  strangely  congenial  and  Indian  wives  quite  to  their 
taste.  Thus  a  large  proportion  of  the  colony  had  drifted  into 
the  woods,  but  instead  of  being,  as  they  were  intended  to  be,  mere 
servants  of  the  trader,  they  had  become  as  arrant  rovers  as  the 
Indians  themselves,  and  had  relapsed  into  semi-savage  hunters. 

In  another  ship  of  the  fall  fleet  Brother  Gabriel  Sagard  and 
Father  Irenee  had  crossed  the  sea  to  relate  their  tale  of  woe  and 
ventilate  their  grievances.  Brother  Gabriel  had  been  only  one  year 
in  Canada,  but  in  that  period  had  sufficiently  proved  his  com- 


170  QUEBEC    IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

niand  of  lluent  narrative  and  ardent  bigotry ;  there  could  be  no 
doubt  therefore  as  to  his  fitness  to  expound  the  pious  argument 
that  all  the  ills  which  beset  the  colony  were  due  to  the  influence  in 
the  company's  afifairs  of  the  hated  Huguenots. 

While  Champlain  was  complaining  of  the  company's  slack- 
ness in  carrying  out  its  scheme  of  colonization,  and  the  Recollet 
Fathers  were  dilating  on  the  indignity  they  were  exposed  to  when 
the  Huguenots  said  their  prayers  in  the  cabin,  while  they  had  to 
sing  the  praises  of  their  God  in  the  prow  of  the  ship,  which  was 
certainly,  as  he  expressed  it,  "giving  the  false  God,  Baal,  a  pre- 
cedence over  the  True  God,"  the  X'iceroy's  patience  was  still 
further  taxed  by  the  complaints  of  the  contending  factions  in  the 
company  itself.  No  wonder  that  he  was  entirely  willing,  for  a 
valuable  consideration,  to  relinquish  the  viceroyalty  over  half  a 
continent  and  fifty  colonists,  and  a  small  fleet  of  trading  ships, 
whose  crews  could  not  even  drive  poaching  rivals  from  the  terri- 
tory over  which  they  had  exclusive  privileges.  With  the  consent  of 
the  King,  Montmorency  transferred  his  dignities  and  troubles 
to  his  nephew,  the  Due  de  Ventadour,  a  much  more  pious  but 
much  less  able  man  than  himself.  Henri  de  Levis,  due  de  Ven- 
tadour, is  said  even  to  have  taken  holy  orders.  He  retained 
Champlain  as  his  representative  in  Canada,  and  the  latter  informs 
us  that,  anxious  to  enlist  more  energetic  missionaries  than  the  Re- 
collets  in  the  serv'ice  of  the  Church,  the  new  viceroy  arranged 
that  six  Jesuit  priests  should  go,  at  his  own  expense,  to  con- 
vert the  Indians  to  the  True  Faith.  Brother  Sagard,  on  the  con- 
trary, claims  the  initiative  for  his  Franciscan  brotherhood.  He  at- 
tributes the  ill  success  of  his  Order  to  its  poverty,  and  to  the  indif- 
ference and  hardly  disguised  hostility  of  the  company.  To  reach 
the  Indian's  conscience  you  must,  he  had  discovered,  appeal  to  his 
stomach,  and  the  RecoUets  had  no  funds  wherewith  to  eflfect  con- 
versions in  that  manner.  They  had  succeeded  as  well  as  the 
Jesuits  in  Brazil  and  in  India,  for  in  torrid  climates  the  na- 
tives could  subsist  on  the  spontaneous  products  of  the  soil ; 
but  to  reach  the  heart  of  the  sufi"ering  Xorth  American  In- 
dian, you  had  to  relieve  his  temporal  wants  :  this  they  could  not 
do — far   less    could   thev    erect    and    maintain    schools    and   col- 


THE  JESUITS  REINFORCE  THE  REtOLLETS.  I7I 

Icgiate  institutions  for  the  Indians  and  the  Frencii.  The  Recol- 
lets,  as  members  of  one  of  the  strictest  sub-orders  of  the  Fran- 
ciscans, could  own  no  real  estate.  The  Jesuits,  though  pledged 
by  most  solemn  vows  to  individual  poverty,  chastity  and  obedi- 
ence, could,  as  an  order,  hold  real  estate  and  collect  rents  for  the 
maintenance  of  their  schools  and  colleges — a  provision  which  their 
experience  in  Canada  proved  to  be  wise,  and  of  which  they  took 
liberal  advantage. 

The  Jesuit  had  made  his  advent  into  New  France  under 
the  patronage  of  Madame  de  Guercheville  fifteen  years  previously, 
and  had  earned  the  credit  in  Acadia  of  apostolic  zeal  and 
devotion.  But  if  the  Recollet  solicited  the  aid  of  this  powerful 
ally,  it  was  not  without  some  misgiving.  Sagard's  account  of 
the  transaction  has  delicious  touches  of  sincerity  to  set  off  his  po- 
litic explanation.  "Many  of  our  friends,"  he  says,  "dis- 
suaded us  from  choosing  the  Jesuit  Fathers  as  our  allies,  assur- 
ing us  that  in  the  long  run  they  would  manage  to  expel  us  from 
our  home,  and  drive  us  from  the  country."  But  there  was  really 
nothing  in  the  demeanor  of  the  good  Fathers,  as  far  as  the  charit- 
able annalist  could  observe,  to  warrant  such  an  insinuation.  Even 
if  one  or  two  among  them  harbored  such  a  thought,  it  would  be 
unfair,  he  says,  to  attribute  it  to  all.  "For  the  sinister  scheme  of 
one  or  two  priests  no  more  stamps  the  whole  Order  with  the 
taint  of  unworthy  motives  than  a  single  swallow  makes  a  spring." 
Evidently  there  were  one  or  two  among  the  members  of  the 
Society  of  Jesus  who  did  justify  the  foreboding  of  the  Recollet 
friars :  for  one  day  Sagard  himself  heard  from  an  official 
source  that,  at  a  meeting  of  the  Council,  it  had  been  decided 
to  cut  off  the  "allowance"  for  the  support  of  two  of  the  Recollets, 
thus  reducing  their  number,  as  without  the  allowance  which  the 
company  had  always  made,  the  mission  could  not  be  sustained  on 
its  existing  footing.  Sagard  admits  that  this  action,  which,  how- 
ever, he  succeeded  in  getting  reversed,  did  not  augur  well  for  the 
future.  To  add  to  their  uneasiness,  the  innocent  Recollets  were 
not  advised  of  the  time  of  the  final  meeting  of  the  Jesuit  Fathers 
with  the  Council  and  with  the  board  of  management  of  the  com- 
pany, nor  of  the  day  of  their  departure  for  Dieppe.    At  length  six 


172  OUEIiEC    IX    THE   SEVENTEEN' Til    CENTURY. 

Jesuits  sailed,  five  only  of  whom,  three  priests  and  two  brothers, 
are  mentioned  by  name  in  Champlain's  narrative.  With  them 
embarked  Father  Joseph  de  la  Roche  Daillon,  the  only 
Recollet  who  had  reached  the  port.  Well  might  Sagard  look 
with  distrust  to  the  future,  despite  his  reflection  that  "little  faults 
will  creep  into  the  conduct  of  the  best  regulated  company  and 
solecisms  be  committed  in  the  most  polite  society." 

In  their  haste  to  take  the  first  ship  the  Jesuits  arrived  in  Que- 
bec in  the  spring  of  1625,  unannoimced,  and  without  letters  from 
the  King.  De  Caen's  nephew,  the  Sieur  Emery,  who  had  been  left 
in  charge  of  the  company's  affairs,  and  whom  Champlain  had 
made  his  deputy,  did  not  offer  them  hospitality  at  the  habitation, 
though  Champlain  says  they  crossed  with  De  Caen  himself,  and 
were  courteously  treated  by  him.  Neither  the  authorities  of  the  fort 
nor  the  habitants  themselves  seem  to  have  bidden  them  a  hearty 
welcome.  As  the  old  company  building  had  been  pulled  down, 
and  the  new  one  was  incomplete,  accommodation  was  scanty,  and 
the  cordiality  of  the  Huguenot  traders  was  scantier  still.  The 
Jesuit  Fathers  were  therefore  thrown  on  the  tender  mercies  of 
their  Recollet  brethren.  That  fellow  priests,  animated  by  the  same 
spirit  and  actuated  by  the  same  aims,  should  dwell  together  would 
seem  a  most  congenial  arrangement,  and  one  wonders,  therefore, 
at  the  indignation  expressed  over  the  action  of  the  company's 
agent,  the  immense  credit  taken  to  themselves  by  the  monks  for 
a  simple  act  of  hospitality  and  the  effusive  manner  in  which  it  is 
acknowledged  by  the  Jesuit  writers.  However  cool  may  have  been 
their  reception  at  the  monastery  of  the  Recollets  on  the  Little 
River,  the  Jesuit  missionaries  received  shelter  there,  and  there  they 
remained  for  two  years  or  more,  till  their  own  quarters  on  their 
seigniory  of  Notre  Dame  des  Anges  were  ready  for  occupation. 

For  a  century  and  a  half  the  Jesuits  were  one  of  the  most 
powerful  ecclesiastical  organizations  in  New  France,  exhibiting 
there  most  conspicuouslv  that  combination  of  religious  ardor  and 
political  astuteness  which  has  been  the  source  both  of  their 
strength  and  of  their  weakness  the  world  over,  one,  however, 
which  is  quite  consistent  with  the  principles  of  the  Church  of 
which    they    have    been    the    most    perfectly    organized    militia. 


i 


CHAMPLAIN  S    NEW    COMMISSION.  I73 

The  Church,  when  its  claim  to  be  the  voice  of  God  and  the 
arbiter  of  all  things,  human  and  divine,  is  admitted,  neces- 
sarily takes  cognizance  of  the  concerns  of  a  man's  private  life,  and 
of  the  still  more  important  concentration  of  human  interests  and 
duties  in  State  atTairs.  The  interference  of  the  Jesuit  Order  in 
politics  can,  therefore,  be  fully  justified  on  theological  grounds, 
however  reprehensible  it  may  have  been  accounted  by  statesmen 
of  every  creed  and  country.  We  shall  find  that  the  members  of 
this  ubiquitous  and  at  times  omnipotent  order,  though  personally 
unassuming,  were  almost  as  influential  in  the  counsels  of 
the  colony  as  the  Governor  or  the  Intendant.  Whatever  traits 
they  otherwise  exhibited,  in  Canada  they  displayed  rehgious 
fanaticism  mellowed  by  true  devotion,  and  kept  in  check  by  world- 
ly wisdom ;  self-abnegation  rising  to  the  height  of  martyrdom, 
associated  with  corporate  selfishness  in  the  business  management 
of  their  vast  estate ;  devoted  loyalty  to  the  Church,  associated,  if 
their  opponents  are  to  be  credited,  with  actual  treason  to  the 
State ;  profound  learning  and  strict  orthodoxy. 

Champlain's  commission  as  lieutenant  of  the  Duke  de  Venta- 
dour  was  ample  enough.  Its  terms  implied  a  real  determination 
to  colonize  and  introduce  the  machinery  of  civilization,  for  it  em- 
powered the  Governor  to  appoint  officers  of  justice  and  make  pro- 
vision for  maintaining  and  enforcing  law  and  order.  It  com- 
missioned him  to  extend  exploration  westward  with  a  view  of 
opening  up  communication  with  China  and  the  East  Indies,  and  in 
the  meantime  to  do  his  best  to  discover  mines  of  gold,  silver  and 
copper  and,  to  extract  and  refine  the  said  metals  from  their 
ores ;  above  all  to  oppose  all  traffic  with  the  Indians  by  either 
Frenchmen  or  other  Europeans  north  and  south  of  Gaspe,  includ- 
ing, therefore,  the  Gulf,  formerly  free.  Evidently  Champlain's 
free  trade  argument  had  had  no  effect. 

DeCaen  returned  to  Canada  in  1625.  Complaint  v/as  made  to 
his  Majesty 's  Council  that  he  had  used  his  influence  to  induce 
Catholics  to  engage  in  religious  rites  according  to  Huguenot  prac- 
tice, an  impeachment  which  he  denied.  There  were  other  dissen- 
sions in  the  Council.  Negotiations  were  opened  looking  to  the 
transfer  of  the  whole  business  to  de  Caen  on  his  guaranteeing  thir- 


174  QUEBEC   IX    THE   SEVENTEEXTII    CENTURY. 

ty-six  per  cent  on  the  capital  of  60,000  livres.  Evidently  the  fur 
trade  was  profitable.  The  Government  intervened,  insisting  on  his 
providing  within  three  days  bondsmen  to  guarantee  the  fulfillment 
of  his  contract,  also  that  he  appoint  a  good  Catholic,  whose  alle- 
giance would  be,  beyond  suspicion,  and  satisfactory  to  the  pious 
Duke,  as  Admiral  of  his  ficct.  .V  certain  capitain  de  la  Ralde  was 
found,  sound  in  the  faith  and  a  trusty  sailor,  and  with  him  Cham- 
plain  set  sail  in  the  good  ship  "Catherine"'  on  April  24,  1626,  for 
the  habitation,  accompanied  by  Father  Joseph  le  Caron,  his  own 
brother-in-law,  Uoulle,  and  Alons.  Destouches,  the  former  with  a 
commission  as  Cham])lain's  lieutenant,  the  latter  as  his  ensign. 
Another  ship,  the  "Alouettc,"  of  eighty  tons  burden,  was  chartered 
for  3,500  livres  by  the  Society  of  Jesus  to  carry  out  three 
more  Jesuit  priests,  the  Fathers  Noyrot,  Anne  de  None  and 
Brother  Jean  Gaufestre,  together  with  twenty  workmen,  to  be 
employed  in  the  erection  of  the  Jesuit  mission,  which  Father 
Lalcmant,  with  the  aid  of  carpenters  borrowed  from  the  habita- 
tion, had  already  commenced  to  build  on  the  north  bank  of  the 
St.  Charles,  near  the  spot  where  Cartier  wintered.  They  had  a 
tempestuous  passage,  and  it  was  the  5th  of  July  before  they 
anchored  under  the  clift. 

For  a  time  hereafter  we  shall  have  in  addition  to  Cham- 
l)lain.  two  ecclesiastical  chroniclers  to  draw  from.  The  re- 
ligious news  and  gossip  of  Father  Sagard  is  supplemented  by  the 
first  of  the  more  humanly  interesting"  records  of  the  Jesuit  Fathers, 
who  looked  at  life  in  its  manifold  phases  from  a  much  more 
practical  point  of  view  than  the  Franciscan  Friars.  Isolated 
in  their  monastery,  the  latter  referred  ever  to  their  fellow  coun- 
trymen at  the  fort  as  "Les  Francais."  Their  vows  seem  to  sever 
the  very  ties  of  nationality,  as  well  as  to  destroy  their  interest 
in  the  common  doings  of  common  men.  Xot  so,  or  at  least 
not  to  the  same  extent,  was  it  with  the  Jesuits,  for  Father 
Lalemant  says,  in  a  letter  to  his  brother,  that  trade,  to  wit, 
the  fur  trade,  in  Canada  at  that  time  was  the  pivot  on  which 
even  mission  work  must  revolve ;  he  therefore  gives  his  brother 
some  account  of  the  business  transactions  of  the  fur  company 
in  that  year  of  grace,   1625.        He    tells    how    formerly,    before 


IDLENRSS   IN   TJIE   COLONY.  1/5 

the  second  association  oljtained  exclusive  trade  privileges,  there 
used  to  assemble  in  Tadousac  from  fifteen  to  twenty  ships  to 
trade  with  the  Indians.  Now  there  arrived  in  June  at  most 
two,  and  sometimes  only  one.  He  enumerates  all  the  articles 
brought  for  traffic  with  the  Indians.  They  consist  of  the  usual 
motley  assortment  of  merchandise,  including  even  Indian  night- 
caps. In  exchange  the  traders  took  back  all  the  various  furs 
which  are  still  the  products  of  the  roving  Indian's  labors.  He 
puts  the  annual  shipment  of  beaver  skins  at  from  iS^ooo  to  20,- 
000,  and  the  price  in  France  at  one  pistole  per  skin.  But  the 
company's  expenses,  he  tells  us,  were  heavy.  Beside  the  outlay  in 
ships  and  provisions,  there  were  some  40  men  employed  the  year 
round  in  Quebec  and  Tadousac,  and  crews  of  at  least  150  on 
the  two  ships  owned  l\v  the  company  which  were  engaged  in  the 
fur  trade.  The  wages  varied  from  100  ecus  Uj  106  livres,  with 
board.* 

The  two  years  of  Champlain's  absence  had  been  uneventful. 
He  tells  us  nothing  of  what  happened  at  the  post ;  in  truth  there 
was  nothing  to  tell.  Before  departing  two  years  previously,  he 
had  gathered  well-nigh  enough  stone,  lime  and  lumber  to  rebuild 
the  habitation  and  complete  the  fort ;  and  they  were  almost  as 
he  had  left  them.  He  might  well  complain  of  the  indolence  of 
all  hands.  The  excuse  given — for  of  course  there  was  an  excuse 
— was  that  half  the  time  of  the  55  inhabitants  had  been  spent 
in  bringing  the  fodder  for  the  animals  from  the  natural  meadow 
at  Cap  Tourmente  on  their  tiny  craft  to  Quebec.  To  remedy  this 
he  determined  to  erect  farm  buildings  at  the  Cape  itself,  and 
there  feed  the  cattle  for  the  sustenance  of  the  fort.  He  little 
dreamed  how  futile  his  labor  would  be. 

Father  Joseph  de  la  Roche  Dallion,  one  of  the  Rccollets,  and 
Father  Brebeuf,  a  Jesuit,  started  in  the  summer  of  1625,  ac- 
cording to  Sagard,  for  the  Huron  country,  but  their  hearts  failed 
them,  and  they  returned,  after  hearing  of  the  drowning  of  good 

*  The  grand  ecu  was  worth  six  francs,  but  the  petit  ecu,  for  which  the 
word  ecu  stands,  was  worth  three  francs.  The  Uvrc  varied  from  20  sous,  at  Tours, 
to  25  sous  in  value,  at  Paris.  The  wages  therefore  varied  from  $60  to  $z\  of  our 
currency. 


176  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

Father  Nicolas  in  the  Ottawa,  on  his  way  back  from  the  Georg- 
ian Bay.  That  can  hardly  have  been  the  motive,  for  P^ather 
Jirebeuf's  subsequent  glorious  career  and  martyrdom  make  it  im- 
possible to  suspect  him  of  timidity.  Probably  the  Hurons  had 
filled  their  canoes  with  merchandise,  and  declined  to  overload 
them  with  the  two  missionaries.  However  that  may  have  been, 
the  next  summer  the  Jesuit  Father  accompanied  them  to  their 
homes,  and  became  the  first  of  the  gallant  band  who  exposed  them- 
selves to  every  hardship,  even  to  martyrdom,  in  the  propagation  of 
the  True  Faith  among  the  Hurons. 

But  the  most  important  event  of  the  whole  season,  if  we  may 
judge  by  the  detail  with  which  it  is  narrated,  was  the  struggle 
at  Quebec  for  the  possession  of  a  little  Indian  boy,  who  was  a 
favorite  of  Father  Nicolas,  and  had  accompanied  him  on  his  last 
fatal  journey.  Though  the  little  urchin  was  at  the  Recollet 
monastery,  the  Jesuits  were  bidding  for  him,  and  Emery  de 
Caen  himself  wished  to  take  him  to  France  under  his  patronage,  as 
a  proof  that  the  company  was  doing  something  towards  fulfilling 
its  engagements  in  the  way  of  civilizing  the  Indian.  So  between 
the  three  claimants  for  the  guardianship  of  the  boy,  the  father, 
w^ith  true  Indian  shrewdness,  was  making  a  threefold  profit  out 
of  his  offspring.  Although  Father  Paul,  who  was  ready  to  sail 
for  France,  took  charge  of  him  on  the  voyage,  the  Jesuits  ulti- 
mately managed  to  win  the  prize  through  the  intercession  of  their 
patron  the  Duke  de  Ventadour.  They  made  the  most  of  the  ac- 
quisition, for  the  little  fellow,  after  such  instruction  in  the  faith  as 
could  be  given  by  a  lay  teacher,  the  only  person  connected  with 
the  Jesuits  in  France  who  had  any  acquaintance  with  the  boy's 
language — Sagard  speaks  of  it  as  rather  superficial — was  bap- 
tized with  much  ceremony  in  the  Cathedral  of  Rouen,  under  the 
name  of  Louis  de  Sainte  Foy.  The  Duke  de  Longueville  and 
Madame  de  Mllars  stood  as  godparents,  and  the  crowd  filled  the 
pile  to  see  the  son  of  a  king,  and  the  heir  apparent  to  a  vast  do- 
main, as  the  sailors  reported  him  to  he,  received  into  Holy  Church. 
It  was  a  fitting  counterblast  to  the  Protestant  baptism  of  Poca- 
hontas and  her  marriage  to  John  Rolfe. 

While  such  petty  intrigues  v^ere  occupying  the  minds  of  the 


RIVAL  RELIGIONISTS.  1 77 

more  intelligent  inhabitants  of  the  post,  the  summer  passed.  No 
land  was  cleared ;  no  fields  plowed ;  no  provision  made  for  self- 
support  by  any  but  the  priests.  What  work  the  artisans  did  on 
the  fort  was  so  ill  done  that  it  tumbled  down  even  before  Kirke 
came  to  blow  it  to  pieces  four  years  later.  Nevertheless  men  were 
found  to  help  the  Jesuits  to  build  their  house  on  the  St.  Charles. 
As  to  the  company,  it  cared  not  a  whit  for  aught  but  its  profits  in 
the  trade  in  peltries. 

Champlain  before  the  season  of  1626  had  passed,  carried 
out  his  plan  of  establishing  a  farm,  under  the  Sieur  Foucher,  at 
Cap  Tourmente,  where  cattle  were  to  be  housed  and  fattened 
on  the  native  grass  for  the  support  of  the  fort.  He  enlarged 
the  fort  of  St.  Louis  in  the  hope  that  ere  long  the  King  would 
send  some  soldiers  to  garrison  it.  He  built  two  demi-bastions 
towards  the  river,  on  which  he  mounted  two  guns,  and,  being 
unable  to  blast  the  solid  rock,  he  protected  the  exposed  flank  of 
the  fort  with  wooden  palisades  and  fascines.  Life  in  the  mean- 
time was  stimulated  by  religious  dissension.  Father  None  came  up 
from  Tadousac  with  an  awful  story  of  how  the  crew  of  Emery's 
ship,  after  their  commander  had  left,  sang,  despite  his  orders, 
the  hymns  of  the  heretic  Clement  Marot  so  loudly  that  even  the 
savages  heard  the  impious  sound  upon  the  shore.  Next  month 
the  good  father  accompanied  Father  Brebeuf  to  the  land  of  the 
Hurons,  where  he  would  not  be  annoyed  by  any  such  profanity. 
But  the  very  day  the  missionaries  started  on  their  long  canoe  jour- 
ney, further  complaint  reached  Champlain  from  Tadousac  of  the 
disobedience  of  de  Caen's  Huguenot  crew,  who  were  charged  now 
with  assembling  on  their  ships  for  public  prayers.  Aggravated  as 
were  their  offences,  Champlain  did  not  dare  to  be  too  severe,  for 
shortly  afterwards  he  received  a  message  from  de  la  Ralde,  the 
Admiral  of  the  company's  fleet,  that  pirates  were  trespassing  on 
the  company's  trade  in  the  lower  St.  Lawrence,  and  ordering 
him  to  despatch  Emery  in  the  Jesuit  ship,  the  "Alouette,"  to  his 
assistance.  More  serious  news  still,  had  he  only  been  able 
to  appreciate  its  significance,  reached  him,  of  the  murder  of  five 
Dutch  traders  by  a  band  of  Mohawks,  though  the  Dutch  were 
the  allies  and  friends  of  the  Iroquois.     So  Emery  de  Caen  de- 


178  OUERFX   IN    THE   SEVEXTEENTII    CENTURY. 

parted  on  August  25th,  leaving  the  colony  rather  short  of  sup- 
plies, to  commence  its  hibernation.  With  de  Caen  went  Pont- 
grave ;  and  it  must  have  been  with  no  little  apprehension  and  re- 
gret that  Champlain,  parted  already  from  his  wife,  and  now  los- 
ing his  old  comrade,  saw  the  vessels  of  de  Caen  set  sail.  His  only 
relief  was  in  work.  He  had  to  establish  in  their  new  building  the 
little  farming  colony  of  six  men,  one  woman  and  a  little  girl,  who 
were  to  take  charge  of  the  cattle  at  Cap  Tourmente,  and  to  get 
out  lumber  enough  to  keep  the  savages  and  carpenters  occupied 
during  the  winter.  Death  meantime  was  busy.  It  carried  off  one 
of  the  Jesuit  staff'  of  workmen,  and  a  little  Indian  girl,  whom, 
however,  Lalemant  had  the  satisfaction  of  baptizing.  If  we  are  to 
credit  Le  Clercq,  the  Jesuits  were  disheartened  this  year  by  the 
fruitlessness  of  their  labor  among  the  Indians  and  the  hopeless 
aspect  of  colonial  aff'airs — so  nmch  so  that,  but  for  the  inspiration 
infused  into  them  by  the  Recollet  monks,  they  would  have  aban- 
doned the  mission.  Their  own  chronicles  do  not  express  any  such 
pusillanimous  intention;  still  priests,  however  saintly  their  char- 
acter, are  but  men,  and,  in  the  confidences  of  the  refectory  at  the 
monasteries  on  the  St.  Charles.  Jesuit  and  Recollet,  despite  their 
suspicion  of  one  another,  must  have  chatted  many  a  time  over  the 
hopelessness  of  the  task  they  had  entered  upon,  which,  to  the  high- 
ly educated  priests  would  naturally  be  more  repulsive  than  to  the 
sandaled  monks. 

Besides  the  nameless  workman  and  the  Indian  girl,  death 
carried  off'  Hebert,  a  man  worthv  of  being  held  in  re- 
membrance as  the  first  habita)it  in  Canada  who  turned 
his  hand  industriously  to  agriculture,  and  raised  enough  from 
the  soil  to  support  his  family.  He  was  buried  in  the  cemetery 
of  the  Recollet  monastery,  but  his  body  was  transferred  more 
than  lialf  a  century  afterwards,  in  the  presence  of  his  daughter, 
Madame  Couillard,  to  the  new  church  of  the  Recollet  Friars, 
where  the  English  Cathedral  now  stands.  Were  his  final  rest- 
ing place  known,  a  monument  might  very  suitably  be  erected  to 
commemorate  the  virtues  of  the  first  farmer  in  the  St.  Lawrence 
valley. 

The  year  1627  was  notable  in  the  annals  of  the  province  for 


RUMORS  OF   WAR.  I79 

the  breaking  out  of  war  with  the  Iroquois.  The  St.  Law- 
rence Indians,  relying  on  assistance  from  the  Dutch,  but  in  direct 
opposition  to  Champlain's  advice  and  the  protests  of  his  brother- 
in-law,  Boulle,  whom  he  sent  to  the  council  at  Three  Rivers,  broke 
the  peace,  and  had  a  temporary  success.  At  Champlain's  personal 
solicitation,  and  that  of  Emery  de  Caen,  who  reached  Quebec  on 
the  9th  of  June,  and  proceeded  up  the  river  at  once  with  Cham- 
plain  to  the  rendezvous  at  Three  Rivers,  the  victors  consented  not 
to  torture  and  kill  their  three  prisoners.  The  French  had,  never- 
theless, to  bear  the  odium  of  the  acts  of  their  savage  allies,  and  to 
pay  the  penalty  of  their  reckless  bravado  by  many  a  year  of 
anxiety  and  the  sacrifice  of  many  an  innocent  life. 

It  was  with  great  pleasure  that  Champlain  on  his  return  to 
Quebec  found  Pontgrave  at  the  habitation.  The  weather-beaten 
old  sailor  had  come  to  Gaspe  on  a  vessel  of  Honfleur,  and  thence, 
with  his  little  grandson,  had  ascended  the  river  in  an  open  boat, 
suffering  on  the  way  agonies  from  the  gout,  but  determined  to 
obey  de  Caen's  instructions,  which  were  to  hasten  to  the  post  as 
manager  of  the  company's  business  afifairs.  He  must  have  brought 
some  forewarning  of  the  quarrel  brewing  between  England  and 
France,  which  broke  out  in  July  of  that  year  through  the  wanton 
and  unprovoked  attack  on  Rochelle  by  the  English  under  Bucking- 
ham ;  for  we  find  that,  when  the  Jesuit  ship  failed  to  arrive,  with 
provisions  for  the  mission  and  a  crew  of  workmen,  apprehension 
of  its  capture  by  the  English  was  so  strong,  and  dread  of  the 
future  so  rife,  that  Father  Lalemant  determined  to  ship  all  hands 
back  to  France,  except  Fathers  Masse  and  de  None,  a  brother  and 
five  workmen.  As  the  Jesuits  were  not  popular,  they  found  it  diffi- 
cult to  secure  passages.  Neither  de  Caen  nor  even  the  Catholic  cap- 
tain, (le  la  Ralde,  showed  any  desire  to  accommodate  them.  Father 
Noyrot  had  quarrelled  with  both  at  Tadousac,  and  they  had  re- 
venged themselves  by  interfering  with  the  shipment  of  provisions 
from  the  lower  port  to  the  Jesuit  establisliment  at  Quebec.  The 
tact  and  good  humor  of  Father  Lalemant  seems,  however,  to  have 
overcome  all  opposition,  for  in  the  end  they  were  given  passage  on 
one  of  the  Company's  ships.  With  the  Fathers  who  remained  the 
companv's  store  keeper  at  the  habitation  was  not  averse  to  sharing 


l8o  QUEBEC   IX    THE   SE\'ENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

his  scanty  stock,  for  he  knew  he  would  get  in  return  more  than  he 
gave.  This  he  undoubtedly  succeeded  in  doing,  for  he  exchanged 
ten  kegs  of  biscuit  for  beaver  skins,  at  the  rate  of  seven  skins  per 
keg.  The  Jesuits  had  bought  the  skins  at  ditiferent  times  at  one 
ecu  apiece.  In  the  long  run,  however,  the  beaver  skins  did  not 
profit  the  company,  as  they  ultimately  fell  into  the  hands  of  David 
Kirke. 

With  gloomy  forebodings,  the  settlement  was  thus  compelled 
to  face  another  dreary  winter,  short  of  provisions,  and  in  peril 
of  being  attacked  the  following  spring  by  an  English  fleet, 
instead  of  being  cheered  by  the  arrival  of  their  countrymen, 
and  by  stores  of  good  things  from  the  mother  country.  More- 
over, the  fear  entertained  by  the  Governor  and  his  subjects  of 
savage  foes  near  home  must  have  been  even  keener  than  his  dread 
of  foes  from  abroad  who  could  at  least  be  depended  on  to  regard 
the  usages  of  civilized  warfare.  The  last  ship  had  hardly  left  Que- 
bec before  disquieting  rumors  reached  the  habitation  of  the  Iro- 
quois being  on  the  warpath  in  dangerous  numbers.  At  this  season 
the  x\lgonquin  Indians  of  the  St.  Lawrence  gathered  from  far  and 
near  to  catch  and  smoke  eels  near  Quebec ;  and  Champlain  had 
only  too  much  reason  to  dread  the  spirit  of  unrest  which  their 
recent  campaign  had  excited,  not  to  speak  of  the  resentment  they 
doubtless  felt  at  his  unwillingness  to  join  them  in  their  aggression 
on  the  Iroquois  confederacy.  It  may  have  been  this  feeling  of  dis- 
content, coupled  with  a  previous  grudge,  which  instigated  the  mur- 
der of  two  Frenchmen  whom  Champlain  had  sent  up  with  cattle 
from  Cap  Tourmente.  One  of  them  was  Henri,  a  servant  of  the 
widow  Hebert :  the  other  a  man  called  Dumoulin.  The  two  un- 
fortunates reached  the  Beauport  Flats  late  in  the  afternoon, 
to  find  the  tide  too  high  to  permit  of  their  crossing.  They 
tried  to  enter  the  hunting  cabin  of  Mons.  Gififard.  afterward 
the  first  Seigneur  of  Beauport.  Finding  it  locked,  they  lay 
down  on  their  blankets  and  slept  the  sleep  of  death,  for  an 
Indian,  mistaking  one  of  them  for  Hebert's  baker,  against 
whom  he  had  a  grudge,  tomahawked  them  both  during  the 
night.  The  murder  was  discovered  the  next  day.  and  a  sum- 
mons was  sent  to  the  monastery  of  the  Recollets  and  to  the  Tes- 


DANGEROUS  TEMPER  OF  THE  INDIAN  TRIBES.  l8l 

uit  house  to  attend  a  special  meeting  of  council  for  devising-  meas- 
ures of  defence  and  protection  against  an  Indian  rising.  The 
situation  was  certainly  critical.  Champlain  was  short  of  arms, 
shorter  still  of  ammunition,  and  already  on  reduced  rations.  He 
suspected  that  war  had  broken  out  with  England.  The  English 
colonies  on  the  seaboard,  which  might  be  expected  to  co-operate 
with  their  parent  State,  were  showing  signs  of  growth  and  ener- 
gy, and  were  already  vastly  more  populous  than  his.  He  knew 
how  rapidly  news  spreads,  and  how  shrewdly  the  calculating  sav- 
age takes  advantage  either  of  enemy  or  friend  in  moments  of  dif- 
ficulty. The  miserable  Montagnai  might  therefore  know  more, 
through  New  England  emissaries,  than  he  did  himself  of  what 
was  passing  in  the  world.  His  quondam  Indian  allies  might,  in 
fact,  be  leagued  with  the  enemies  of  France.  What  course 
should  he  take?  Should  he  temporize,  or  take  the  risk  of  a  stern 
stand  against  the  treacherous  savages?  He  wisely  adopted  the 
latter  course.  He  called  on  the  chiefs  of  the  Montagnais  to  de- 
liver up  the  murderer  or  murderers.  At  first  they  laid  the  crime 
to  the  charge  of  Iroquois  marauders,  and  disclaimed  all  re- 
sponsibility. Refusing  indignantly  to  accept  such  an  explanation, 
Champlain  arrested  an  Indian  who  had  once  threatened  the  life 
of  a  Frenchman.  Subsequently  he  seems  to  have  arrested  an- 
other suspect.  The  third  day  a  deputation  left  three  children  with 
him  as  hostages,  but  he  warned  them  that  henceforth  his  men 
would  go  armed,  and  when  in  the  woods  shoot  down  every  Indian 
who  did  not  satisfactorily  answer  the  challenge. 

Fortunately  the  snow  lay  light  that  winter,  and  as  moose  hunt- 
ing was  poor,  the  pinch  of  hunger  began  to  be  felt  more  acutely 
by  the  red  man  than  even  by  the  white.  To  propitiate  Cham- 
plain a  band  of  Indians  crossed  the  river  and  begged  for  food, 
offering  in  return  three  young  girls,  to  be  sent,  if  he  wished, 
to  France.  When  the  ships  left  there  were  altogether  fifty- 
five  souls  in  Champlain's  government — men,  women  and  chil- 
dren— of  whom  eighteen  were  carpenters  and  builders.  Of  this 
little  band  two  had  been  murdered,  but  Champlain  had  accepted 
as  hostages  three  boys ;  and  now  three  girls  of  hearty  appetite 
were  added.     Champlain  took  Pontgrave,  who  was  in  charge  of 


l82  -  QUEBEC    IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

the  company's  all  airs  and  of  its  stores,  into  his  counsel. 
They  decided  that  it  woidd  be  prudent  to  give  the  Indians 
wliat  they  could  spare  of  their  only  abtuidant  article  of  diet, 
peas,  and  to  accept  in  return — their  promises.  Shortly  after- 
wards the  father  of  one  of  the  girls  fell  ill,  and  was  baptized,  but 
baptism  not  restoring  him  to  health,  he  insisted  on  being  removed 
from  the  monastery  to  his  old  cabin  and  to  his  own  people, 
where,  with  dancing  and  noisy  incantations,  the  medicine  men 
hastened  his  death.  It  was  not  an  edifying  or  an  encouraging 
result  of  the  holy  fathers"  missionary  labors,  but  they  had  al- 
ready learned,  and  regretfully  acknowledged,  when  they  called 
in  the  aid  of  the  wealthy  Jesuit,  that  conviction  was  best  created 
in  the  Indian's  mind  by  ministering  to  his  stomach. 

The  year  1628  was  one  of  unbroken  gloom.  During  the 
winter,  by  night  and  ])y  day,  apprehension  of  Indian  rising 
haunted  the  feeble  colony.  Spring  brought  no  relief.  Expe- 
dition after  expedition  of  the  Montagnais  left  to  fight  the  Iro- 
quois, but  Champlain  would  not  join  them.  May  came  and  went; 
June  followed ;  but  no  ships  were  even  reported  as  coming  to 
their  relief.  Their  provisions  were  reduced  to  some  spoiled  bis- 
cuits and  a  small  stock  of  peas  and  beans.  Not  only  were  they 
verging  on  famine,  but  they  had  not  even  a  schooner  in  which 
to  visit  the  Gulf  and  seek  provisions  and  relief  from  the  sailors 
of  the  season's  fleet,  at  this  time  fishing  below  Gaspe.  De  la  Ralde 
had  neglected  to  send  back  their  schooner  with  supplies  in  the  pre- 
vious fall.  Pontgrave  could  have  taken  command  of  it,  but  among 
the  fifty-five  who  were  actually  at  the  fort  of  Quebec  there  wx're 
priests  and  carpenters  and  clerks,  but  no  sailors.  Nevertheless,  the 
most  indolent  lent  a  hand  in  building  a  boat  in  which  to  send  a 
crew  for  the  larger  craft  at  Tadousac.  With  the  crew  were  to  have 
been  shipped  as  passengers  as  manv  of  the  inhabitants  as  were 
merely  bread  eaters. 

To  aggravate  their  anxiety  and  suflfering.  superstition 
added  imaginary  terrors.  The  towers  of  the  fort,  badly  built 
during  Champlain's  absence,  fell  on  Sunday,  July  9,  but  the 
fears  of  the  people,  stinmlated  by  the  friars,  saw  a  supernatural 
jwrtent  in  the  accident.     "For,"  as  Brother  Sagard  savs,  "what 


THE  ENEMY  AT  HAND.  183 

reason  could  we  assign  for  their  falling  when  the  weather  was 
so  perfectly  calm,  had  not  God,  by  their  collapse,  intended  to 
foretell  a  disaster  ?  Only  three  years  had  elapsed  since  they  were 
built.  They  did  not  therefore  crumble  through  age,  but  the  in- 
iquity of  people  whom  God  wills  to  chastise  by  the  descent  of 
the  English   was  the  cause  of  the  catastrophe." 

While  the  boat  was  building  Champlain  and  Pontgrave  were 
using  every  argument  to  induce  Couillard,  Hebert's  son-in-law, 
the  only  active  man  in  the  community,  first  to  caulk  and  then 
to  sail  it.  He  refused,  but,  as  things  turned  out,  it  made  little  dif- 
ference, for  on  the  very  day  the  towers  fell  a  messenger  came  up 
by  land  from  Cap  Tourmente,  to  say  that  an  Indian  lad  had 
reached  the  farm  with  the  news  of  the  arrival  at  Tadousac  of  a 
fleet  of  ships  under  the  command  of  a  certain  Captain  Michel  of 
Dieppe,  a  renegade  Frenchman.  Champlain  tried  to  persuade 
himself  that,  though  the  iieet  was  too  large  to  be  the  company's, 
de  Caen's  fleet  might  have  been  joined  by  fishermen,  and  that  per- 
haps the  strange  captain  was  of  the  numl)er.  The  native  who 
brought  the  tidings  to  the  farm  arrived  in  his  canoe  shortly  after- 
wards, and  on  closer  interrogation,  created  grave  suspicion  in 
Champlain's  mind  that  the  fleet  was  an  English  one.  As  soon  as 
this  disquieting  news  reached  the  Jiabitation,  Father  Joseph  left 
the  monastery  at  once  with  two  Indians  to  look  after  his  little  flock 
at  Cap  Tourmente,  where  thev  had  alreadv  l)uilt  a  little  chapel; 
but  they  had  not  compassed  half  the  journey  before  they  were  met 
by  two  canoes  carrying  the  Sieur  b'oucher  from  that  place,  more 
frightened  than  hurt.  He  was  fleeing  from  the  English,  with  a 
woman  and  child.  Champlain  meanwhile  had  taken  measures  to 
secure  information.  There  was  a  Greek  at  the  habitation  willing 
to  assume  the  disguise  of  an  Indian  and  to  descend  the  river  as  a 
spy.  Before  reaching  the  end  of  the  island  he  also  met  the  fugi- 
tives. There  was  therefore  no  longer  any  doubt  of  the  enemy's 
being  at  hand.  In  fact,  a  schooner  with  twenty  men,  piloted  by  a 
Frenchman,  had  been  dispatched  from  Kirke's  fleet  at  Tadousac  to 
destroy  the  farm  building  and  kill  the  stock  at  Cap  Tourmente. 
They  had  done  it  most  effectually,  burning  the  buildings,  and 
killing  the  whole  herd  of  forty  cattle.     Kirke  wiselv  judged  that. 


184  QUEBEC    IX   THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

by  cutting  off  Champlain's  total  supply  of  meat,  he  was  com- 
pelling him  to  capitulate  sooner  or  later.  At  the  same  time  he 
replenished  his  own  commissary.  Kirke's  lieutenant  expected  to 
surprise  the  farm,  for  his  men  landed  at  daylight,  and,  when  dis- 
covered, pretended  they  were  friends.  Foucher  was  already  on 
the  alert.  No  opposition,  however,  was  made  by  the  farm  hands, 
and  no  casualties  occurred,  Sieur  Foucher  himself  managing  to 
escape  with  no  more  serious  injury  than  a  few  bruises. 

Champlain  at  once  set  himself  to  strengthen  the  defenses  of 
the  habitation  and  the  fort,  and  the  RecoUet  friars  began  to 
deliberate  how  best  they  could  escape  capture  and  continue  their 
mission.  The  surest  means  seemed  to  be  to  accompany  the 
Huron  hunters  to  their  distant  lodges  on  the  shores  of  the  Georg- 
ian Bay,  whither  Kirke  and  his  men  could  certainly  not  follow. 
So  Father  Germain  and  a  Brother  started  on  the  journey,  but  meet- 
ing a  Jesuit  Father,  Joseph  de  la  None,  who  was  returning  to  Que- 
bec just  as  they  received  news  of  the  departure  of  Kirke 
and  his  English  pirates,  as  they  branded  them,  from  Tadousac, 
they  decided  to  let  the  Hurons  proceed  alone,  and  to  return  to  their 
siionastery,  a  course  which  was  fruitful  of  casuistical  explanation 
by  the  faithful,  and  of  irreverent  gossip  among  the  ungodly  of 
Quebec. 

On  the  afternoon  of  the  day  following  the  attack  on  Cap 
Pourmente,  a  canoe  was  paddled  up  the  St.  Charles  with  such 
hesitation  that  the  lookout  on  the  fort  supposed  it  to  be  manned 
by  enemies  ignorant  of  the  locality,  and  Champlain  accordingly 
sent  some  arquebusiers  through  the  woods  to  intercept  them. 
The  supposition  was  wrong,  for  it  contained  three  of  the  prisoners 
taken  by  Kirke's  men  at  the  farm,  with  some  Basque  sailors,  whom 
Kirke's  fleet  had  captured  in  the  river.  They  were  the  bearers  of 
a  demand  for  the  surrender  of  the  place.  The  demand  and  Cham- 
plain's  reply  are  models  of  courteous  phraseology.  Utterly  incap- 
able of  resistance  as  he  was,  it  was  courageous  on  Champlain's 
part  to  send  so  peremptory  a  refusal.  He  did  so  because  he  expect- 
ed day  by  day  assistance  from  France,  feeling  sure  that  the 
powerful  and  determined  minister  who  ruled  the  King  of  France, 
the  Queen  mother  and  the  nation,  would  not  leave  him  helpless  in 


A  BATTLE   IN  THIi  GULF.  185 

such  an  hour  of  peril.  It  was  assurance,  not  mere  conjecture,  on 
Kirke's  part  that  a  reheving  force  was  at  hand  which  deternnnecl 
him  to  sail  back  in  order  to  meet  the  approaching  enemy,  rather 
than  forward  to  attack  a  weak  post,  defended  by  a  handful  of 
helpless  and  disheartened  traders.  That  such  was  the  con- 
dition of  the  post  he  had  doubtless  learned,  both  from  the 
Indians,  who  at  the  time  were  irritated  against  Champlain, 
and  from  the  company's  competitors  in  the  lower  river,  who 
were  always  ready  to  deal  a  blow  at  the  monopoly.  He 
also  knew  that  de  Roquemont  was  at  Gaspe  and  would  follow  him 
up  the  river,  and  that,  if  he  proceeded,  he  would  be  hemmed  in 
between  the  fort  of  Quebec,  which  might  offer  some  resistance, 
and  the  French  ships.  Like  a  brave  sailor,  therefore,  he  elected  to 
attack  the  approaching  fleet,  which  consisted  of  the  same  number 
of  ships  as  he  himself  commanded.  If  he  defeated  de  Roque- 
mont, Champlain  would  be  at  his  mercy.  If  defeated,  he  would 
stand  a  better  chance  of  retreat  in  the  open  Gulf  than  in  a  narrow, 
dangerous  river,  with  the  navigation  of  which  he  was  imperfectly 
acquainted.  The  event  justified  his  decision.  De  Roquemont, 
learning  from  the  Indians  at  Gaspe  that  an  English  fleet  was  at 
Tadousac,  despatched  a  shallop  with  ten  men  under  Desdames,  the 
clerk  of  the  new  company.  They  were  instructed  to  elude  the 
English,  if  possible,  ascertain  their  strength  and  position,  land 
a  signal  party  at  the  Island  of  St.  Bernard,  so  as  to  communi- 
cate with  his  fleet  when  it  hove  in  sight,  and  push  forward  to 
warn  Champlain  of  his  approach. 

De  Roquemont  had  hardly  commenced  to  creep  up  the 
river  before  the  English  were  seen  to  be  bearing  down  upon 
him.  His  first  duty  was  to  save  his  cargo  and  relieve  the  fam- 
ishing post  at  Quebec.  He  therefore  attempted  to  escape,  but 
Kirke's  ships  were  superior  to  his  in  speed.  A  battle  ensued  which 
lasted  fifteen  hours,  in  which  1,200  shots  were  fired  and  two 
Frenchmen  were  killed.  The  battle  only  ceased  with  exhaustion  of 
the  Frenchman's  ammunition.  His  ships  all  fell  a  prey  to  the 
English  commander,  who,  however,  accorded  honorable  terms 
of  capitulation.  There  were  on  De  Roquemont's  ships  two 
Jesuit    priests    and    two    Recollet    Friars    to    recruit    the    con- 


l86  OUEBIiC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

siderable  body  of  clergy  already  in  the  colony,  and  a  number  of 
workmen  with  their  wives  and  children,  wlio  were  being  sent 
out  by  the  company  of  the  One  Hundred  Associates,  which  had 
in  this  inauspicious  spring  replaced  de  Caen's  commercial  part- 
nership. When  the  fight  was  impending,  their  fellow  passengers, 
knowing  the  dislike  which  Kirke's  crew  bore  to  the  members  of 
the  ecclesiastical  profession,  obliged  the  four  priests  to  adopt  a 
lay  costume.  But  their  apprehensions  were  groundless.  Kirke, 
whatever  else  he  was,  was  a  gentleman.  The  crews  and  pas- 
sengers of  low  estate  were  sent  in  two  of  the  ships  to  France. 
The  captain,  the  Jesuits,  and  men  of  means  were  carried  to 
England,  where  they  were  retained  until  the  stipulated  ransoms 
were  paid.  The  Recollet  Friars,  and  certain  poor  gentle  folk  of  no 
prospective  pecuniary  value,  were  permitted  to  return  to  France  in 
one  of  the  fishing  sloops,  which  were  subsequently  found  at  St. 
Pierre,  ready  to  sail  with  their  cargoes  of  dry  cod.  With  so  much 
ransom  to  be  collected,  with  the  cargoes  of  De  Requemont's  four 
ships  to  be  disposed  of,  and  with  the  additional  prizes  taken  at  St. 
Pierre  to  be  safely  ferried  across  the  ocean,  Kirke  prudently  de- 
cided to  leave  Champlain  and  his  miserable  compatriots  free  to 
eat  up  the  rest  of  their  peas,  and  be  starved  into  submission  on  his 
return  in  the  following  spring. 

In  course  of  time  the  shallop  with  Desdames  and  the  eleven 
men  reached  Quebec.  He  told  of  the  abolition  of  the  old  com- 
pany and  the  creation  of  a  new.  But  he  was  the  bearer  of  no 
official  communications,  from  either  de  Roquemont  or  the  home 
authorities.  Father  Lalemant,  however,  wrote  Champlain,  prom- 
ising to  see  him  soon,  if  the  English,  who  were  barring  the  way, 
would  permit.  But  Desdames'  arrival  simply  served  to  increase 
the  misery  of  the  little  settlement — not  only  by  the  evil  news  he 
brought — but  because  he  and  his  people  added  so  many  more 
mouths  to  consume  the  scanty  rations,  now  reduced  to  seven 
ounces  of  peas  per  day  per  man.  The  munitions  of  war  were  also 
not  on  a  scale  which  permitted  Champlain  to  challenge  Kirke,  con- 
sisting, as  they  did,  of  only  fifty  pounds  of  powder  and  a  few 
matchlocks. 

As  soon  as  the  canoes  had  descended  the  river  with  Kirke's 


THE   COLONY    IN    EXTREMITIES.  1 87 

envoy,  a  deputation  was  sent  to  survey  the  clainai;e  clone  at  Cap 
Tourmente.  The  marauders  had  killed  all  the  cattle  but  one  cow, 
which  had  made  its  escape,  but  the  carcases  of  several  others, 
which  had  not  been  burnt  or  carried  away  by  Kirke's  men,  were 
found.  All  the  buildings  were  demolished,  and  the  sacred  ves- 
sels of  the  little  chapel  had  either  been  stolen  or  destroyed.  Cham- 
plain  would  have  been  wiser  had  he,  during  the  previous  two  years, 
compelled  his  idle  crew  of  trappers  and  traders  to  clear  a 
tract  of  land  on  the  height  near  Quebec  for  the  pasturage  of 
his  cattle,  instead  of  leaving  so  valuable  a  depot  immediately  in 
the  track  of  an  enemy  ascending  the  river.  His  experience  of  the 
far  reaching  arm  of  the  English  marauders  under  Argall  of  Vir- 
ginia should  have  warned  him  of  the  fate  which  might  at  any 
moment  overtake  his  defenseless  settlement  at  Cap  Tourmente. 

The  summer  and  autumn  wore  away  without  news.  No  ships 
came  from  France  with  the  much  needed  relief,  and  neither  did 
the  dreaded  English  fleet  heave  in  sight.  Champlain  pathetically 
says,  "While  we  were  impatiently  awaiting  tidings  of  the  battle 
we  were  doling  out  our  small  resources  of  peas.  Most  of  our 
men  were  showing  signs  of  increased  debility.  Even  our  stock 
of  salt  was  running  short.  To  reduce  the  peas  to  meal  and  thus 
make  them  more  palatable  and  nutritious,  I  first  thought  of 
extemporizing  a  wooden  mortar,  but  finally  decided  to  try  and 
make  a  hand-mill.  Our  blacksmith  found  a  spindle  and  mill 
stones,  and  the  carpenter  undertook  to  mount  them.  Thus  ne- 
cessity compelled  us  to  do  what  for  twenty  years  had  seemed 
impossible.  Everyone  brought  his  allowance  of  peas,  and  it  was 
returned  to  him  as  flour.  When  the  eel  season  arrived,  the  fish 
relieved  our  wants.  The  Indians  are  expert  fishermen,  but  were 
only  willing  to  give  us  a  few,  and  for  these  they  made  us  pay 
right  dearly.  The  men  bartered  even  their  clothes  for  eels,  and 
the  store  secured  1,200  of  the  slimy  creatures  in  exchange  for 
fresh  beaver  skins,  the  price  demanded  being  one  skin  for  ten 
eels.  Great  hopes  had  been  entertained  of  the  grain  products 
of  Hebert's  farm,  but  when  the  harvest  was  garnered,  all  that 
could  be  spared  was  nine  and  a  half  ounces  a  week  of  barley, 
peas  and  Indian  meal — a  scanty  allowance  for  so  manv  people." 


l88  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

Choniina,  a  friendly  Indian,  brought  them  in  some  venison 
when  the  winter  was  far  advanced  and  the  snow  lay  deep.  Cham- 
plain  sent  some  of  his  own  men  hunting.  They  were  successful, 
but  the  greedy  fellows  ate  so  much  of  the  deer  they  killed  that 
not  more  than  twenty  pounds  reached  the  habitation. 

To  keep  up  the  spirits  of  the  men,  Champlain  set  about  build- 
ing a  flour  mill  to  be  run  by  waterpower,  though  there  was  nothing 
to  grind.  Then  an  old  boat  was  repaired,  to  be  used  in  the 
last  extremity  in  seeking  relief  from  their  misery,  and  the  never- 
ending  task  of  cutting  firewood  then,  as  now,  occupied  a  large 
share  of  the  time  of  the  people.  While  thus  distracting  the 
thoughts  of  his  men  from  the  perilous  situation,  he  himself  was 
cogitating  endless  schemes  for  saving  them  from  the  starvation 
which  seemed  imminent,  unless  either  their  countrymen  or  the 
enemy  came  to  their  rescue.  If  they  could  sustain  life 
until  autumn,  he  believed  they  could  garner  enough  food 
to  keep  them  during  another  winter.  One  plan  which  he 
seems  to  have  seriously  contemplated  for  replenishing  their 
empty  storehouse  was,  under  the  guidance  of  the  Montagnais 
Indians,  to  attack  a  Mohawk  village  and  carry  ofif  the  stock  of 
maize  which  he  knew  to  be  stored  in  plenty  in  their  lodges.  An- 
other scheme  was  to  seek  the  friendship  and  the  assistance  of  the 
Abenakis,  who  were  represented  as  being  rich  in  stores  of  grain 
and  anxious  for  his  alliance  and  aid  against  the  Iroquois. 
To  reconnoitre  the  Iroquois  country  he  sent  ofif  a  trustworthy 
man  on  May  i6th. 

But.  as  in  the  w'ider  world,  so  in  this  group  of  unfortunate 
exiles,  with  famine  staring  them  in  the  face,  and  cut  off  from  all 
knowledge  of  what  was  befalling  their  countrymen  and  their 
kinsmen,  misery  acted  as  an  excuse  for  marrying  and  giving  in 
marriage,  rather  than  as  a  deterrent,  for  on  the  very  day  Cham- 
plain's  emissary  and  spy  left  for  the  Iroquois  country,  the  widow 
Hebert  consoled  herself  for  the  loss  of  her  distinguished  and 
enterprising  first  husband  by  marrying  Guillaume  Hubou  with 
more  than  customary  ceremonial.  Only  under  the  Hebert  roof 
was  there  still  enough  to  eat,  and  the  marriage  feast,  however 
simple,  must  to  the  hungry  crowd  have  been  a  sumptuous  ban- 


DESPERATE  MEASURES.  189 

quet,  for  the  public  stock  of  peas  was  running  so  short  that  it 
would  be  exhausted  by  the  end  of  the  month. 

Another  event  marked  the  16th  of  May.  While  one  canoe 
went  up  the  river  towards  the  Iroquois  country,  another  was 
despatched  down  the  river  to  watch  for  friends  and  warn  the 
Governor  of  the  approach  of  foes.  The  emissaries  were  supplied 
WMth  a  roundrobin  to  all  illicit  traders,  promising  them,  not  only 
exemption  from  punishment,  but  better  pay  in  peltries  for  their 
provisions  than  the  Indians  would  give,  if  they  would  but  treat 
with  the  company.  Not  content  with  one  scouting  party,  he  sent 
the  company's  chief  clerk,  Desmoulins,  in  the  shallop  with  six 
sailors  on  the  following  day  to  scour  the  river  for  assistance,  and 
with  orders  not  to  give  up  the  search  until  July  10,  which  was  the 
latest  date  when  a  trader  might  be  expected  to  enter  the  Gulf. 

Desmoulins  warned  him  that  if  the  sailors  under  his  command 
reached  a  homeward  bound  ship,  his  authority  would  be  pow- 
erless to  restrain  them.  Nevertheless  they  were  despatched,  for, 
happen  what  might,  their  departure  left  so  many  less  to  feed,  and 
perhaps  they  might  find  some  salt  at  Gaspe  or  on  the  Isle  de 
Bonaventure,  with  which  to  cure  the  cod  they  might  by  good 
fortune  catch.  Not  until  three  days  after  he  had  despatched 
Desmoulins  did  he  learn  from  twenty  Indians,  coming  from  be- 
low on  their  way  to  fight  the  Iroquois,  of  the  defeat  of  de  Roque- 
mont  ten  months  before,  and  of  the  fate  of  his  crew  and  pas- 
sengers. The  knowledge  of  the  disaster,  he  saw  at  once,  must 
lower  the  prestige  of  the  French  in  the  eyes  of  the  Indians,  and 
make  their  situation  still  more  critical. 

To  add  to  his  embarrassment,  he  still  held  as  prisoners  the 
Indians  suspected  of  killing  the  two  Frenchmen  on  the  Beau- 
port  Fiats,  eighteen  months  previously.  He  had  no  positive  evi- 
dence of  their  guilt,  and  he  had  postponed  the  trial,  not  caring  to 
risk  the  consequences  of  a  decision  until  the  fleet  with  the  com- 
pany's agent  should  arrive.  One  season  had  passed,  and  no  ship 
had  sailed  into  the  harbor.  Now  another  was  well  advanced,  and 
still  the  company's  ship  did  not  arrive.  Old  Chomina  pleaded  for 
the  suspected  prisoners,  and  promised  to  give  bail  for  their  ap- 
pearance   when    the    trial    came.      Champlain    wisely    agreed    to 


IQO  QUEBEC    IN   THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

liberate  the  unfortunate  suspects,  who  were  dying  of  want  and 
confinement,  and  who  were  so  feeble  that  the  friends  of  one  of 
'tliem  had. to  carry  him  out  of  his  prison  house.  In  doing  so,  how- 
ever, he  made  it  a  condition  that  they  should  be  retained  by  the 
Recollet  Friars  as  hostages. 

The  Abenaki  Indians  were  persuaded  to  barter  their  Indian 
corn  for  goods,  and  to  provide  eight  canoes  to  convey  a  party  to  be 
sent  to  negotiate  with  them.  Taught  by  experience,  Champlain 
stipulated  that,  when  the  fishing  season  should  come  round,  the 
Indians  would  not  demand  an  unreasonable  price  for  their  eels. 
Matters  were  becoming  desperate.  The  schooner  that  had  been  re- 
paired during  the  winter  was  ready  for  sea.  Pine  trees  had 
been  tapped  for  tar,  and  seals  killed  on  Cap  Tourmente  had  yielded 
oil.  The  vessel  was  therefore  calked,  and  poor  old,  gouty 
Pontgrave  was  half  forced  and  half  persuaded  to  take  com- 
mand and  carry  thirty  of  the  hungry  colonists  to  France.  Two 
years  before  he  had  suffered  agony  in  ascending  the  river  from 
Gaspe  in  an  open  boat,  and  the  two  years  of  privation  and  anxiety 
which  followed  had  not  encouraged  him  to  volunteer  to  command 
a  crazy  craft  and  a  helpless  crew  on  a  still  more  trying  expedition. 

He  consented,  nevertheless,  and  decided  to  leave  his  grandson, 
Du  Marais,  in  his  place,  and  to  carry  home  a  cargo  of  i,ooo  beaver 
skins.  He  insisted,  however,  that  before  sailing  his  conmiission 
from  de  Caen  should  be  read  publicly  after  mass,  believing  that 
such  publicity  would  give  him  a  stronger  claim  on  his  employers 
for  arrears  of  salary.  To  this  Champlain  consented,  but  he  at  the 
same  time  read  his  own  commission  from  the  King  and  the 
Vici^roy,  which  clearly  established  his  supreme  authority  in  the 
(jolony.  Pontgrave  was  deeply  ofifended.  On  further  discussion, 
it  transpired  that  Pontgrave  was  un^villing  to  risk  a  trans-Atlan- 
tic voyage  in  the  extemporized  vessel,  and  had  determined,  if  he 
sailed,  to  return  to  Quebec  unless  he  could  find  in  the  Gulf  a  safer 
craft  to  which  to  transfer  crew  and  cargo.  To  this  Champlain  was 
vehemently  opposed,  his  supreme  motive  being  to  reduce  the  num- 
ber of  mouths.  Pontgrave  having  in  the  end  positively  declined  to 
sail,  Champlain  commissioned  his  brother-in-law,  Boulle,  to  com- 
mand the  schooner. 


A  STARVING  SETTLEMENT.  IQI 

All  who  could  be  spared  went  into  the  woods  to  dij:;-  roots, 
wherewith  to  provision  the  ship.  Then  Champlain  assembled 
those  who  were  to  sail  with  Boiille.  He  desired  to  know 
how  many  would  stop  at  Gaspe  and  repair  the  Jesuits'  build- 
ing which  had  been  burned  by  Kirke,  remaining  there  with 
the  Indians  to  fish  for  sustenance ;  and  how  many  would  risk 
the  danger  of  the  trans-Atlantic  voyage.  Most  of  them  elected 
to  be  landed  at  Gaspe.  On  the  26th  of  June  they  started,  Boulle, 
Desdames,  the  company's  head  clerk,  and  the  fugitives,  on  their 
dangerous  voyage,  in  a  smaller  and  worse  equipped  ship  than  any 
of  Columbus'  caravels.  Sagard  gives  the  tonnage  of  "Le  Coquin" 
at  twelve  to  fourteen — Champlain,  in  his  deposition  l)efore  Sir  H. 
Martin,  at  six  or  seven  tons.  Fortunately  diey  were  captured 
by  Kirke  before  a  worse  fate  befell  them. 

More  than  one-third  of  the  population  had  left  with  Boulle's 
crew.  Those  that  remained  applied  themselves  to  fighting  the 
famine.  Some  planted  turnips  and  other  roots,  and  hoped  that 
they  might  live  to  dig  them  up.  Others,  to  relieve  their  immedi- 
ate necessity,  gathered  wild  fruits  and  roots.  Others  went  fish- 
ing, but  with  scant  success,  as  they  lacked  both  hooks  and  lines. 
Hunt  they  dare  not,  as  the  stock  of  powder  was  reduced  to  thirty 
or  forty  pounds,  and,  damaged  as  it  was  by  damp,  had  to  be  re- 
served for  defence.  Sagard  says  that  the  root  from  which  they 
derived  most  nourishment  was  that  of  the  Solomon  seal,  and  that 
it  had  the  additional  virtue  of  being  a  not  unpalatable  food  when 
dried,  ground  and  baked  into  bread.  We  are  asked  to  believe, 
moreover,  that  it  served  as  a  charm  against  piles  when  carried  as 
a  scapular  on  the  breast. 

To  vary  the  diet  they  made  a  soup  of  the  roots,  to  which  was 
added  barley,  bran,  and  acorns,  the  latter  being  previously  boiled 
with  ashes  to  extract  the  bitterness.  Dried  fish  was  a  luxury, 
when  added  to  the  nauseous  pottage,  but  there  was  no  salt  to 
flavor  it.  As  a  warning  of  the  approach  of  the  English,  another 
tower  of  the  fort  fell,  as  on  the  previous  year.  To  dispel  the  super- 
stitious fears  of  the  garrison,  Champlain  proceeded  at  once  to 
rebuild  it. 

The  annual  coming  of  the  Hurons  was  awaited  with  mixed 


192  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY, 

feelings  of  pleasure  and  anxiety.  Some  twenty  of  the  French 
were  likely  to  return  with  them,  but  there  was  nothing  for  them 
to  eat.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Hurons  might  have  a  supply  of 
grain  for  barter.  To  ascertain  this  Champlain  entrusted  Cho- 
mina,  his  faithful  Montagnais,  with  cutlery  and  other  merchan- 
dise, and  sent  him  to  intercept  the  approaching  canoes,  and  barter 
his  goods  for  what  food  he  could  induce  them  to  part  with.  In 
vain  was  the  request  made,  for  wdien  on  July  17  the  Hurons  and 
Frenchmen  arrived,  the  savages  declared  that  they  had  hardly 
food  enough  for  their  own  wants.  Father  Brebeuf  was  of  the 
party,  and  though  he  offered  tempting  prices,  only  three  small 
sacks  of  Indian  meal  could  be  obtained. 

Ouagabemat,  Chomina's  brother,  who  afterwards  became  a 
convert,  was  sent  hi  the  other  direction  to  the  Etchemins  and 
even  to  the  English  settlement  to  beg  for  food  ;  but  the  rivers 
were  low,  and  he  and  his  French  comrades  speedily  re- 
turned. 

A  gleam  of  pleasurable  anticipation  was  shed  over  the  dreary 
prospect  by  the  return  of  the  emissary  sent  to  the  Abenakis.  He 
told  of  a  friendly  people,  of  villages  teeming  with  plenty,  where 
the  hungry  Frenchmen  would  be  hospitably  received,  and  he  con- 
veyed a  promise  that  a  great  chief  would  follow  with  canoes 
laden  with  Indian  corn.  I5ut  it  was  hope  only,  no  tangible  relief, 
that  he  brought  back,  and  the  whole  population  had  long  been 
living  on  hope,  or  little  else  than  hope. 

Relief  came  at  last  with  the  news  brought  by  a  Montagnais  of 
the  near  approach  of  the  English  fleet,  at  a  moment  when,  from 
the  lateness  of  the  season,  hope  of  escape,  even  by  such  unwelcome 
means,  had  died  away.  Champlain  at  the  time  was  alone  in  the 
Fort.  Every  able-bodied  man  and  woman  was  absent,  some  fish- 
ing, some  gathering  roots.  Even  his  body  servant  and  the  two 
little  Indian  girls,  Hope  and  Charity — for  Faith  had  returned 
to  her  own  people — were  in  the  woods.  About  ten  in  the 
morning  they  commenced  to  hurry  back.  His  servant  had 
seen  the  fleet.  It  was  only  a  league  below  the  city,  hidden 
by  Point  Levis.  He  and  the  little  Indian  girls  had  gathered 
four  bags  of  roots,  but  what  was  that  wherewith  to  provision 


ARRIVAL  OF  KIRKE'S  FLEET.  I93 

the  garrison  and  maintain  a  siege?  The  ominous  news  had 
reached  the  Franciscan  Monastery  and  the  Jesuit  House,  and 
the  Fathers  and  Monks  hastened  to  the  Jiabitation  to  place 
their  services  and  their  counsel  at  the  disposal  of  the  Gov- 
ernor. It  was  decided  to  make  at  least  a  show  of  resistance, 
but  to  surrender  without  a  shot  if  fair  terms  were  offered. 

Soon  the  English  fleet  of  three  sails,  the  Flibot, '  of  one 
hundred  tons  and  ten  guns,  and  two  bateaux  or  transports,  each 
of  one  hundred  tons  and  six  guns,  the  whole  manned  by  about 
150  men,  rounded  the  point.  Then  a  boat  flying  a  white  flag 
was  seen  steering  for  the  habitation.  In  response,  a  white  flag 
was  run  up  on  the  Fort.  "An  English  gentleman,"  as  Champlain 
is  careful  to  explain,  carried  the  summons  to  surrender  from 
Louis  and  Thomas  Kirke,  as  agents  for  their  brother  David,  who 
was  in  command  of  the  English  fleet.  Champlain  admits  that 
every  form  of  courtesy  was  observed  by  his  English  captors.  He 
reflects  on  the  opposite  treatment  his  men  received  from  the 
renegade  Frenchman,  who  had  assisted  and  piloted  the  English 
fleet.  He  is  a  little  puzzled  to  account  for  the  conduct  of  the 
English  visitors,  which  was  so  different  from  the  popular  esti- 
mate of  their  character.  He  explains  it  by  the  strain  of  French 
blood  in  the  veins  of  the  "Quers,"  as  he  always  called  the  Kirkes ; 
Louis  Quer  was  always  courteous,  because  a  Frenchman  by  na- 
ture, and  a  lover  of  France,  his  mother  having  been  a  French 
woman  of  Dieppe.  As  if  this  explanation  of  the  anomaly  of  a 
Scotchman  being  a  gentleman  were  not  sufficient.  Champlain  fur- 
ther indulges  in  the  supposition  that  the  courtesy  was  assumed 
in  order  to  induce  the  French  to  remain,  and  thus  avoid  the  neces- 
sity of  replacing  them  with  Englishmen,  against  whom  Cham- 
plain supposes  Kirke  had  a  positive  repugnance.  The  Kirkes 
must  certainly,  from  whatever  sources  they  inherited  their  fine 
feeling,  have  possessed  it  to  an  eminent  degree,  for  they  seem  to 
have  forgotten,  or  forgiven,  the  obloquy  cast  upon  them  in  Paris 
the  previous  winter,  when  they  were  burnt  in  effigy  on  the  receipt 
in  France  of  the  news  of  the  defeat  of  de  Roquemont's  fleet. 

The  negotiations  between  Champlain  and  the  brothers  were 
sufificiently  protracted   to   save   the  honor  of  the  noble  man  thus 


194  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

thrown  helpless  on  their  mercy,  and  avoid  the  appearance  of  a 
precipitate  capitulation.  The  letter  which  the  English  sailor  carried 
to  the  unfortunate  governor  was  formulated  in  as  generous  terms 
as  a  challenge  to  surrender  could  well  be.  The  messenger  could 
not  speak  French,  and  no  one  at  the  habitation  could  speak  Eng- 
lish, but  as  Father  Joseph  and  the  envoy  could  converse  in  Latin, 
the  explanations  on  both  sides  were  made  in  that  scholarly 
language.  Poor  Champlain  acknowledged  in  writing  the 
receipt  of  the  summons  to  surrender,  and  asked  for  time  to 
answer,  but  warned  the  Kirkes  not  to  approach  within  gunshot 
of  the  Fort,  nor  to  set  foot  on  land  pending  negotiations,  which 
he  promised  should  not  be  protracted  beyond  the  following  day. 
Father  Joseph  also  went  on  board  as  Champlain's  emissary  to 
confer  verbally,  and  to  inquire  why,  in  a  time  of  peace,  which 
Kirke's  emissary  admitted  to  exist,  they  were  attacked.  The 
answer  was  vague,  as  such  answers  usually  are,  when  it  is  a 
case  of  force  majeure.  Kirke  doubtless  considered  that  all  due 
allowance  for  the  susceptibility  of  his  foe  had  been  made,  when 
he  warned  Father  Joseph  that  an  answer  must  be  given  the 
same  evening.  He  therefore  sent  the  messenger  back  before  dark 
for  the  Governor's  decision.  It  was  already  prepared.  Cham- 
plain  demanded  that  the  Kirkes  should  produce  their  commission 
from  the  British  King,  that  his  men  should  retain  their  arms, 
and  that  all  who  wished  to  leave,  whether  laymen  or  Church- 
men, Friars  or  Jesuits,  should  be  transported  to  France.  He 
especially  required  that  these  conditions  apply  to  his  little  Indian 
girls — Hope  and  Charity.  No  violence  was  to  be  shown  any 
one,  layman  or  priest,  to  those  who  might  surrender  at  the  fort 
or  to  his  brother-in-law,  Boulle  and  the  crew  and  passengers 
under  his  command,  who  had  been  captured  in  the  Gulf.  Pro- 
visions were  to  be  supplied  to  those  who  elected  to  return  to 
France,  and  such  should  be  allowed  to  transport  their  private 
holdings  of  skins  and  other  property.  They  were  to  be  provided 
with  a  ship  of  sufficient  size  to  carry  them  to  France  within  three 
days  of  their  arrival  in  Tadousac. 

Louis  and  Thomas  Kirke  promptly  replied  that  their  brother's 
commission  was  in  due  form,  and  would  be  exhibited  when  thev 


CAPITULATION  OF   QUEBEC.  IQS 

had  reached  Tadousac ;  that  they  could  not  supply  a  separate 
ship  for  the  transportation  of  Champlain  and  his  colonists  to 
France,  but  would  guarantee  their  safe  passage  to  England,  and 
thence  to  France,  a  safer  passage  than  if  they  had  to  defend 
themselves  against  another  hostile  English  fleet  which  might 
intercept  them.  They  agreed  to  allow  the  Frenchmen  of  quality 
to  retain  their  arms,  personal  property  and  private  stock  of  furs, 
but  limited  the  wardrobe  of  the  soldiers  to  one  beaver  skin  coat 
apiece.    They  declined  to  take  the  two  little  Indian  girls. 

The  terms  being  accepted,  the  fleet  approached  on  the  20th,  and 
the  English  force  of  150  men  landed.  Then  Champlain  pleaded 
in  person,  and  not  in  vain,  to  Louis  Kirke  for  his  two  Indian 
girls,  to  whom  he  had  become  attached  through  two  years  of 
fatherly  care  and  tutelage.  Any  misapprehension  as  to  the  re- 
lation of  the  pure-hearted,  single-minded  commander  to  his 
charge  was  quickly  dispelled.  But  on  the  representation  of  the 
renegade  interpreter,  Marsolet,  at  Tadousac,  that  the  Indians 
would  resent  the  removal  of  the  girls  to  France,  now  that  the 
French  no  longer  held  the  Fort.  David  Kirke  decided  to  send 
them  back  to  Quebec,  where  they  were  placed  under  the 
charge  of  the  wife  of  Couillard. 

Champlain  requested  that  an  armed  force  be  detailed  to  protect 
the  property  of  the  Recollet  Fathers  and  the  Jesuit  Priests,  and 
the  houses  of  Madame  Hubou  and  her  son-in-law  Couillard.  Then 
the  keys  of  the  habitation  and  the  company's  stores  were  delivered 
up,  and  the  stock  of  goods  was  handed  over  by  the  clerks  Cor- 
neille  and  Olivier,  the  company's  chief  factor,  old  Pontgrave, 
being  saved  the  humiliation  of  making  the  surrender  in  person 
by  an  attack  of  gout. 

Kirke  put  the  stores  in  charge  of  one  Le  Baillif,  a  former  clerk 
of  de  Caen,  whom  Champlain  accuses  of  appropriating  from  3,000 
to  4,000  beaver  skins,  and  whom  he  places  in  the  class  of  un- 
utterable scoundrels,  with  Etienne  Brule,  Champigny,  an  old 
Huron  interpreter,  Nicholas  Marsolet,  wlio  had  served  as  inter- 
preter with  the  Montagnais,  and  Pierre  Pay,  all  Frenchmen,  wdio 
had  been  captured  with  Boulle  in  the  ship  near  Gaspe,  and  had 
been  compelled  to  pilot  Kirke's  fleet  up  the  river,  which  they  had 


196  QUEBEC    IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

done  so  skilfully  as  to  outsail  Emery  de  Caen,  who  had  the  start 
of  them. 

Louis  Kirke  absolutely  refused,  until  they  sailed,  to  allow 
Champlain  to  vacate  the  Fort  or  abandon  his  own  quarters,  though 
as  in  duty  bound,  he  nominally  took  possession.  It  must  have  been 
a  pretty  scene  to  watch  these  two  gentlemen,  vying  with  one 
another  to  mitigate  the  embarrassment  of  the  one  and  the  grief 
of  the  other,  and  to  smooth  over  the  asperity  which  their  hostile 
relations  might  naturally  create.  "Louis  Kirke  plodded  up  the 
hill,"  Champlain  tells  us,  "to  take  possession  of  the  fort.  I  wished 
to  surrender  to  him  my  quarters,  but  he  persistently  refused  to 
allow  me  to  leave  them  until  I  should  leave  Quebec.  In  this  and 
in  every  way  he  showed  me  every  courtesy  imagination  could 
conceive  of.  I  begged  permission  that  mass  be  celebrated,  and 
this  request  he  also  granted  to  our  party.  I  also  begged  that  he 
give  me  an  inventory  and  a  certificate  of  all  the  effects  seized 
with  the  habitation,  and  this  he  gladly  accorded  me."  This  in- 
ventory appeared  again  and  again  in  subsequent  law  proceed- 
ings. It  tells  a  woeful  tale  of  the  deplorable  neglect  to  which 
the  old  company  exposed  its  servants,  and  the  disgraceful  risk 
the  government  was  selfishly  willing  to  allow  its  subjects  to 
run,  isolated  as  they  were  in  the  wilderness,  surrounded  by  sav- 
ages, and  open  to  attack  by  an  energetic,  ever  watchful 
enemy,  like  England.  The  list  exhibits  the  total  armament  with 
which  Champlain,  with  all  his  high-sounding  titles,  was  ex- 
pected to  defend  himself  and  New  France :  Four  brass 
pieces,  weighing  about  150  poimds  each;  i  brass  piece,  weigh- 
ing about  80  pounds;  15  iron  boxes;  2  small  iron  pieces  of  ord- 
nance, about  800  weight  each ;  6  murderers ;  i  small  iron  piece 
of  ordnance  of  80  pounds  weight;  45  small  iron  bullets  for  the 
brass  pieces ;  6  iron  bullets :  26  brass  pieces,  weighing  3  pounds 
each ;  40  pounds  of  powder  belonging  to  Mons.  de  Caen  of  Diep- 
pe;  30  pounds  of  metal  belonging  to  the  French  King;  13  whole 
and  I  broken  musket ;  i  arquebus ;  i  trap ;  2  large  arquebuses, 
6  feet  to  7  feet  in  length,  belonging  to  the  King;  2  other  arque- 
buses; 10  halberts;  12  pikes  belonging  to  the  King;  5,000  to 
6,000  lead  bullets ;  some  pigs  of  lead ;  60  cuirasses,  two  of  them 


THE  ENGLISH  FLAG  RAISED.  I97 

complete  and  pistol  proof ;  2  brass  petards,  weighing  800  pounds ; 
carpenters'  tools,  etc. ;  a  wind-mill,  a  hand-mill  and  some  utensils. 

In  his  deposition  before  Sir  Henry  Martin  in  the  November 
following,  Champlain  besides  enumerating  substantially  the  above 
articles,  believes  that  there  were  in  the  company's  store  2,500  to 
3,000  beaver  skins,  some  boxes  of  knives  and  some  iron 
shafts  (arrow  heads).  Kirke,  in  his  deposition,  gives  the  num- 
ber of  beaver  skins  as  only  1,713.  But  of  provisions,  Cham- 
plain  admits  that  there  were  none.  He  says  "at  the  time  of 
taking  of  the  said  fort  or  habitation,  the  men  in  the  same  had 
been  living  by  the  space  of  about  two  months  on  nothing  but 
roots."  Two  of  the  RecoUet  Friars  offered  to  try  and  escape 
with  the  Indian  Chomina  and  thus,  far  from  the  reach  of  the 
English,  retain  their  hold  on  the  mission.  Father  Le  Caron  was 
favorable  to  the  scheme,  but  Champlain  opposed  it.  He 
may  have  feared  political  complications,  or  doubted  the  constan- 
cy of  the  good  friars,  having  a  vivid  recollection  of  their  holy 
intention  and  faulty  fulfillment  in  a  similar  crisis  the  year  before. 
Had  the  friars  carried  out  their  proposal,  it  would  have  been 
more  difficult  for  the  Jesuits  to  supplant  them  on  the  restoration 
of  the  colony  to  the  French  rule. 

These  preliminaries  accomplished,  the  English  ensign  was 
hoisted  on  the  fort  on  Sunday,  the  22nd  of  July,  and  saluted  by 
a  salvo  from  the  fleet  and  by  the  firing  of  the  little  guns  on  the 
fort  itself  and  the  habitation.  On  the  following  day  Thomas  and 
Louis  Kirke  visited  the  Recollet  Monastery  and  the  House  of  the 
Jesuit  Fathers.  They  accepted  the  offer  of  some  religious  paint- 
ings, and  the  Protestant  minister  did  not  refuse  the  gift  of  some 
of  the  good  fathers'  books.  .A.mid  such  amenities  the  sor- 
rowful day  passed.  By  the  24th  all  arrangements  had  been 
completed  for  the  transportation  of  those  who  chose  to  leave. 
The  articles  of  capitulation  having  been  signed,  Champlain  pa- 
thetically admits  that  every  day's  delay  seemed  a  month ;  and 
therefore  he  and  his  little  Indian  girls  were  allowed  to  embark 
on  board  the  three  boats,  and  proceed  with  Captain  Thomas 
Kirke  to  Tadousac. 

While  Champlain  finds  difficulty  in  accounting  for  the  cour- 


198  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

tesy  of  his  captors,  he  roundly  abuses  Marsolet  and  other  rene- 
gade countrymen,  whom  he  accuses  of  robbing  the  company's 
store  of  its  cash  and  the  chapel  of  some  holy  ornaments,  though 
they  professed  to  be  Catholics.  Sagard,  on  the  other  hand,  de- 
scribes how  the  clergy  hid  their  vestments  and  principal  church  or- 
naments. But  there  is  often  in  these  defamatory  passages  of  the 
edition  of  1632  a  false  ring,  unlike  the  calm  candor  of  his  earlier 
narrative,  that  excites  suspicion  that,  either  his  own  mind  was 
under  extraneous  influence  when  writing,  or  that  the  manuscript, 
as  already  suggested,  was  revised  by  others. 

It  is  not  stated  how  many,  or  who  they  were,  that  elected  to 
remain  in  Canada.  It  w-ould  seem  that  Kirke  was  willing  that 
as  many  as  could  should  stay,  but  he  especially  urged  Aladame 
Hebert  and  her  son-in-law,  Couillard,  as  well  as  the  mem- 
bers of  religious  orders,  to  remain  and  reap  their  harvests.  He 
even  removed  the  restrictions  to  trade  with  the  Indians,  which 
had  been  so  great  a  grievance  under  the  company's  rule.  Nicholas 
Blundell,  in  his  deposition  made  in  the  following  November, 
states  that  all  the  people  of  the  said  fort  and  habitation,  except 
sixteen,  were  sent  away — some  to  go  to  France,  and  the  rest  to 
be  distributed  among  the  savages  in  the  country.  The  Abbe 
Laverdiere,  in  his  notes,  computes,  from  references  made  by 
Champlain  and  from  entries  in  the  Registre  de  Notre  Dame  de 
Quebec,  that  not  less  than  twenty-one,  or  about  one-quarter  of 
the  population — and  that  the  best  element  of  the  whole — remained 
in  Canada.  The  families  of  Hebert,  Couillard,  Abraham  Martin, 
whose  name  has  been  perpetuated  in  that  of  the  famous  battle 
field,  together  with  Pierre  de  Tosles  and  Nicolas  Perrot,  probably 
remained,  as  the  seed  from  which  sprang  the  sturdy  French-Can- 
adian race. 

Champlain  was  not  fated  to  reach  even  Tadousac  without  fur- 
ther adventure.  Kirke's  ships  sighted  a  French  sail  in  the  river. 
It  proved  to  be  Emery  de  Caen's  ship  carrying  stores  to  the 
needy  garrison  in  Quebec  and  news  of  the  peace.  They  neverthe- 
less joined  battle,  and  de  Caen,  overmatched,  struck  his  flag, 
after  a  close  hand  to  hand  engagement.  Sagard  claims  the  vic- 
tory was  obtained  by  the  refusal  of  the  Huguenots  in  de  Caen's 


THE  RETURN  TO  FRANCE.  1 99 

ship  to  light  against  their  fellow-rehgionists ;  but  while  Sagard's 
statement  of  what  he  actually  witnessed  carries  conviction  of 
veracity,  the  stories  he  relates  at  second-hand  convey  a  different 
impression.  The  two  ships  were  not  ill-matched,  but  when  Kirke's 
two  schooners  came  to  his  assistance,  de  Caen  had  to  surrender. 

It  was  the  9th  of  September  before  Pontgrave,  the  priests,  and 
the  principal  detachment  of  those  who  \vere  to  leave,  embarked  for 
Tadousac.  It  would  seem  that  the  priests  were  ultimately  given 
no  option  in  the  matter.  Had  the  result  of  the  engagement  between 
Thomas  Kirke  and  de  Caen  been  different,  de  Caen,  with  the  as- 
sistance of  those  still  in  Quebec,  deprived  of  arms  as  they  were, 
might  have  recovered  the  post.  But  during  the  interval  no  resist- 
ance was  made  to  the  English  occupation.  The  time  was  occupied 
by  Louis  Kirke  in  making  preparations  for  his  own  safety,  and  for 
transporting  to  Tadousac  those  who  were  to  leave ;  while  the  latter 
were  busy  making  the  best  disposal  they  could  of  their  own 
property.  The  Recollet  Friars,  confident  of  their  return,  hid 
in  the  woods  or  buried  such  of  their  valuables  as  would 
not  suffer  from  exposure,  and  packing  their  vestments  in  a  leather 
trunk  deposited  them  with  some  trustworthy  guardian.  Cham- 
plain  was  the  only  compulsory  emigrant  allowed  to  take  all  his 
personal  effects  with  him.  But,  until  they  sailed,  the  priests  were 
permitted  to  say  mass  daily,  Louis  Kirke  even  supplying  them 
with  wine  from  his  stores,  with  which  to  celebrate  the  sacrament. 
His  liberality  indeed  excited  doubt  in  the  priestly  mind  as  to  the 
sincerity  of  his  reformed  convictions.  They  probably  did  not  ap- 
preciate the  w^ide  difference  in  temper  and  creed  beitween  a 
French  Huguenot  and  an  English  Puritan,  or  even  churchman, 
of  the  reign  of  Charles  the  First.  Before  leaving  the  St.  Law- 
rence David  Kirke  himself  made  a  flying  trip  from  Tadousac  to 
Quebec,  and  assured  those  who  remained  of  fair,  liberal  treat- 
ment, and  promised  them  that  business  would  be  conducted  with 
more  activity,  and  on  more  liberal  terms,  than  heretofore. 

Thus  ended  the  first  serious  attempt  at  French  colonization. 
For  twenty-one  years  the  experiment  had  lasted  of  trying  to  build 
up  a  colony  on  the  basis  of  a  narrow  and  exclusive  national 
policy,  through  the  agency  of  a  commercial  company.     The  State 


200  QUEBEC   IX   THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

desired  to  see  the  valley  of  the  St.  Lawrence  inhabited,  but  shrank 
from  entrusting  power  to  any  company  which  would  encourage  indi- 
vidual initiative.  The  Church  strove  to  convert  the  savages,  and 
would  gladly  have  peopled  the  great  waste  with  industrious  French- 
men; but  its  principles  compelled  it  to  exclude  the  most  enter- 
prising of  the  French  population,  the  Huguenots.  The  trad- 
ing companies,  even  if  their  interests  had  induced  them  to  pro- 
mote immigration,  which  was  not  the  case,  could  offer  but  scanty 
encouragement  to  an  enterprising  merchant  or  to  a  laborer. 
Neither  could  engage  in  trade  without  infringing  on  the  com- 
pany's exclusive  privileges.  A  man  could  not  take  up  land — al- 
though a  whole  continent  lay  before  him  unoccupied — without  a 
special  grant  from  the  Crown.  He  could  not  follow  his  primitive 
instincts  and  join  a  roving  Indian  band  without  falling  under  the 
stricture  of  the  government.  He  dare  not  indulge  in  any  freedom 
of  religious  action  or  speech,  without  bringing  down  upon  himself 
the  severest  censure  of  the  clergy,  who  composed  a  vigilant  police 
force,  consisting  of  about  one-tenth  of  the  total  w'hite  population. 
It  is  not,  therefore,  to  be  wondered  at  that,  after  twenty-one  years 
of  such  adverse  conditions,  the  colony,  including  the  priests,  num- 
bered somewhat  less  than  one  htmdred  souls  :  that  only  an  acre  and 
a  half  of  land  was  under  cultivation,  and  that  draft  oxen  and  a 
plow  had  been  imported  by  one  inhabitant  only.  Louis  Guillaume 
Couillard,  the  son-in-law  and  one  of  the  heirs  of  Louis  He- 
bert.  Let  it  be  noted  that  this  does  not  include  the  land 
cultivated  by  the  Recollets  and  the  Jesuits.  Champlain  says,  "The 
Jesuits  had  land  enough  under  cultivation  to  support  themselves 
and  the  twelve  servants,  and  no  more ;  whereas  the  Recollets  had 
four  or  five  acres  under  cultivation."  But  Champlain,  or  per- 
haps his  editor,  implies  that  during  the  previous  year  the  friars 
were  partial  in  the  distribution  of  their  surplus.  Champlain 
says  that  there  were  fifty-five  to  sixty  people  employed  by  the 
company,  but  this  estimate  did  not  include  the  women  and  chil- 
dren, and  priests.  Adding  to  the  sixty  employees  five  women, 
eight  children,  four  Recollet  friars  and  four  Jesuit  priests,  we 
have  eighty-one  ;  and  allowing  that  tliere  were  twenty  in  the  Huron 
country,  the  total  is  about  one  hundred,  as  stated  by  Champlain. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

The  Company  of  One  Hundred  Associates,  and  Quebec 
from  1629  to  J  632,  Under  the  Kirkes. 

During  the  two  whole  years  Champlain  was  shut  up  in 
Quebec  prior  to  its  capture,  he  received  no  official  communi- 
cation from  the  King  or  the  \'iceroy,  or  even  from  the  company'^ 
head  office.  Desdames,  the  new  company's  head  clerk,  whom  de 
Roquemont  in  1628  had  sent  with  eleven  men  to  reconnoitre,  and 
who  had  eluded  Kirke's  fleet,  brought  him  a  letter  from  his 
friend.  Father  Lalemant.  This  told  him  of  the  breaking  out  of 
war;  of  the  dissolution  of  the  old  company;  of  the  formation  of 
that  of  the  One  Hundred  Associates,  and  of  the  masterful  man- 
agement of  public  afifairs  by  the  haughty  Cardinal.  Much  of 
even  this  news  was  more  than  a  year  old. 

In  very  truth,  while  he  had  been  doing  his  best  merely  to  keep 
alive  the  little  band  of  Frenchmen  struggling  with  adversity  on 
the  St.  l^awrencc,  events  were  occurring  which  were  to  de- 
termine definitely  and  permanently  the  character  of  the  future 
colony  and  the  complexion  of  its  government.  France,  dur- 
ing the  reign  of  the  last  king  of  the  V^alois  race,  had  passed 
from  feudalism  to  national  unity  and  absolute  monarchy.  The 
reign  of  Henry  IV.,  the  first  of  the  Bourbons,  was  occupied  in 
securing  his  own  ascendancy  and  in  reconciling  his  new  position, 
as  a  convert  to  Romanism  and  King  of  a  Roman  Catholic 
state,  with  his  old  position  as  champion  of  the  Protestant  Refor- 
mation, which  he  had  nominally  abandoned,  while  still  sympathiz- 
ing with  his  former  allies.  The  period  of  distraction  which 
followed,  under  the  regency  of  his  Queen  widow.  Marie  de  Me- 
dici, and  his  weak,  favorite-ridden  son,  Louis  XIII..  afforded 
opportunity  for  the  forces  which  opposed  monarchical  cen- 
tralization to  organize  into  two  violent  factions.  One  was 
headed  by  the  great  nobles,  whose  paramount  object  was  to  re- 


202  QUEBEC  IX  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

cover  their  lost  privileges.  The  other  was  a  resuscitation  of  the 
Protestant  revolt  against  absolutism  in  Church  and  State ;  for 
while  Republican  ideas  were  being  openly  promulgated  in  other 
reformed  countries  as  a  corollary  to  liberty  of  conscience,  in 
France  the  Huguenot  church  organization  assumed,  under  a  sim- 
ilar disguise,  political  functions  which  were  little  short  of  revolu- 
tionary. Thus  it  happened  that  nobles,  whose  real  principles  were 
in  favor  of  feudal  reaction,  sat  side  by  side  with  ardent  clerical 
politicians  in  the  Huguenot  council  room,  and  fought  shoulder  to 
shoulder  with  genuine  Huguenot  zealots  on  the  battle  field.  In 
France,  as  elsewhere,  leaders  of  reform  were  to  be  found  who 
under  the  guise  of  religious  enthusiasm  concealed  selfish  personal 
aims  or  political  ambitions. 

So  matters  stood  when  there  arose  to  power  one  of  the  greatest 
statesmen  of  any  age.  As  Bishop  of  Luzon,  Armand  Jean  du 
Plessis  appeared  as  the  friend  in  turn  of  ^^larie  de  Medici,  of 
her  tiring  woman,  Eleanor  Galigai,  of  the  Queen  Regent  herself, 
and  even  of  the  King's  favorite,  the  Queen's  bitterest  enemy, 
Luines.  As  Cardinal  Richelieu,  risen  to  power,  he  was  as  will- 
ing as  in  the  days  of  his  unsatisfied  ambition  to  attain  his  ends 
by  conciliation,  if  conciliation  happened  to  serve  his  purpose  bet- 
ter than  force.  And,  being  a  statesman  and  not  a  bigot,  he  was 
prepared  to  use  indifferently  the  forces  of  Protestantism  or  the 
armies  of  the  Church  to  subdue  his  master's  and  his  country's 
enemies.  In  Richelieu's  estimation  the  King's  foes  were  neces- 
sarily his  country's,  for  he  believed  in  the  Divine  Right  of  Kings ; 
but  in  practice  France's  friends  were  his  friends,  and  France's 
foes  his  own  foes,  for  he  wielded  the  royal  power  more  complete- 
ly than  he  could  have  done  as  premier  of  a  constitutional  mon- 
archy. With  him  religious  predilections  were  subordinate  to  the 
claims  of  statecraft.  He  was  a  Prince  of  the  Church,  but  he 
was  also  the  Minister  of  France.  When  the  interests  of  France 
could  be  subserved  by  the  Church  and  its  agents,  he  was  ready  to 
use  both ;  but  if  he  considered  that  the  interests  of  France  de- 
manded toleration  of  the  Church's  enemies,  he  would  tolerate 
them.  Pliable  if  political  exigencies  demanded  it,  he  was  inex- 
orable and  inflexible  in  carrying  out  his  set  purposes,  yet  without 


THE  CARDINAL  AND  THE  HUGUENOTS.  2O3 

vindictiveness.  In  person  he  planned  and  executed  the  siege  of 
La  Rochelle,  and  neither  the  risk  of  losing  pohtical  power  nor 
peril  of  life  would  induce  him  to  leave  the  trenches  until  the  re- 
bellious city  had  submitted,  and  the  political  aspirations  of  the 
Huguenots  had  been  crushed  forever.  Having  once  taught  the 
reformers  the  hopelessness  of  their  republican  aspirations,  he 
appreciated  too  justly  the  value  of  their  enterprising  spirit 
to  follow  up  his  victory  by  punitive  measures  which  might  have 
driven  them  out  of  France.  The  motive  of  his  policy  was  to 
strengthen  the  power  of  the  monarchy  and  make  it  independent  of 
popular  control.  As  the  king  needed  trained  men  to  navigate  the 
ships  of  his  mercantile  marine,  to  manage  the  mercantile  affairs 
of  the  country,  and  to  operate  the  looms  of  his  factories,  this  great 
statesman  was  too  wise  to  commit  the  folly  perpetrated  by  Louis 
the  Great,  tlie  next  occupant  of  the  throne,  who,  blinded  by  his 
own  glory,  rashly  revoked  without  any  justification  the  Edict  of 
Nantes,  and  so  drove  the  most  enterprising  merchants  and  most 
skillful  mechanics  and  operatives  from  the  realm. 

Nevertheless,  could  Richelieu  have  foreseen  the  full  effect  of 
his  own  acts,  he  would  have  hesitated  in  going  as  far  as  he  did. 
In  razing  La  Rochelle ;  in  crushing  Protestantism ;  in  cancelling 
de  Caen's  contract ;  in  putting  restrictions  on  the  Huguenot  mer- 
cantile spirit  and  maritime  operations,  he  was  effectually  check- 
ing the  ardor  and  enterprise  of  the  only  element  in  France's  pop- 
ulation which  showed  any  special  aptitude  or  ambition  in  the  di- 
rection of  building  up  a  naval  power  for  France.  The  greatest 
Minister  of  Marine  who  has  ever  presided  over  that  department 
in  France  dealt,  unconsciously,  with  his  own  hand,  the  most  fatal 
blow  to  French  progress  and  reform. 

To  decide  wisely,  under  the  embarrassing  conditions  created  by 
the  rebellious  Huguenots,  was  indeed  almost  impossible.  The  dif- 
ficulty with  which  the  Cardinal  was  met  in  determining  his  colo- 
nial policy  was  that  of  maintaining  the  absolute  authority  of  the 
Crown  if  free  scope  were  allowed  to  indivichial  enterprise.  In 
an  old  land,  where  prejudices  and  precedents,  family  memories 
and  instincts,  retain  men  in  the  paths  trodden  by  their  fore- 
fathers, the  bulk  of  mankind  needs  to  be  stimulated  to  effort  in 


204  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

new  directions,  whether  of  action  or  of  thought.  It  is  very  differ- 
ent with  communities  consisting  of  men  who  have  gone  forth  to 
seek  their  fortunes,  and  make  new  homes  for  themselves,  in  lands 
beyond  the  sea.  No  stimulus  is  usually  needed  to  induce  them 
to  leave  the  beaten  track.  To  Richelieu's  mind  it  was  clear  that, 
to  succeed  in  creating  a  submissive  community,  he  must  select  as 
colonists  those  of  his  countrymen  who,  as  good  Catholics,  could 
be  depended  on  to  fear  God  and  honor  the  King.  In  order  to 
check  all  exuberance  of  enterprise,  he  excluded  the  Huguenots 
from  New  France,  and  instituted  a  system  of  government  which 
minimized  to  the  utmost  the  influence  of  the  people.  To  prevent 
the  achieving  of  commercial  independence,  by  the  colonists,  with 
all  that  might  flow  therefrom,  he  vested  the  rights  of  trade  in  the 
Company ;  and  he  used  the  Jesuit  order  as  educators  and  mis- 
sionaries for  promoting  the  doctrine  of  absolute  submission  to 
State  and  Church,  and  as  detectives  for  reporting  the  first  symp- 
toms of  political  disquiet.  Though  de  Monts  and  the  de  Caens 
had  the  usual  selfishness  of  men  enjoying  exclusive  privileges,  in- 
dividually they  and  their  co-religionists  would  probably  have 
made  pushing,  industrious  settlers,  had  they  been  permitted  and 
encouraged,  not  only  to  hold  land  in  Canada,  but  also  to  engage 
freely  in  mercantile  pursuits. 

The  Puritans  of  New  England  contained  excellent  elements 
for  building  up  a  vigorous  and  self-reliant  nation.  The  same  can 
hardly  be  said  of  the  rank  and  file  of  the  settlers  who  were  sent 
out  to  New  France.  Were  the  religious  dififerences  between  the 
two  groups  the  real  cause  of  success  or  failure?  If  not  the 
sole  cause,  they  were  certainly  important  factors.  The  Puri- 
tan policy  of  religious  exclusiveness  in  New  England,  aimed 
against  Roman  Catholics,  was  as  indefensible  on  theoretical 
grounds  as  Richelieu's  colonial  policy  of  religious  exclusiveness 
aimed  against  the  Huguenots ;  but  practically  the  results  were 
widely  different.  The  ultra-Protestants  of  New  England  were 
bigots,  wedded  to  certain  notions  of  government  in  Church 
and  State ;  but  their  notions  were  their  own  notions,  had  been 
formed  independently,  without  suggestion  from  the  parent  State, 
and  were  held  tenaciously.   These  men  recognized  no  authority 


COMMERCIAL    RIVALRY.  1205 

(3iit  their  own  interpretation  of  the  Bil:)le,  and  were  thus  free  to 
commence  at  once  and  frame  a  State  for  themselves  on  orig'inal 
lines.  They  engaged  in  trade  with  the  same  disregard  to  rules 
and  regulations,  whether  imposed  hy  King  or  Parliament,  if  what 
they  deemed  their  inherent  rights  were  disregarded,  as  they 
showed  to  the  decrees  of  Church  and  Ecumenical  Councils,  when 
they  clashed  with  their  private  judgment.  In  Canada,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  immigrants  selected  to  huild  up  New  France  were 
obedient  vassals  of  the  State,  and,  if  possible,  still  more  obedient 
children  of  the  Church.  They  accepted  the  doctrine  of  their  civil 
and  ecclesiastical  rulers  that  to  act  for  themselves  was  illegal  and 
to  think  for  themselves  nothing  less  than  impious. 

In  1626  or  1627  Richelieu  assumed  the  portfolio  of  Commerce 
and  Navigation.  A  Frenchman  to-day  can  easily  realize  the  im- 
pulse which  drove  the  great  minister  to  foster  colonization  as 
a  check  to  the  progress  of  his  successful  rivals,  England  and  Hol- 
land, in  the  same  field.  He  had  hardly  assumed  office  when  the 
Company  of  Morbihan  was  organized  under  his  auspices  to  trade 
with  New  France,  the  West  Indies,  and  the  Baltic.  It  consisted 
of  one  hundred  shareholders,  had  a  capital  of  1,600,000  livres, 
and  was  endowed,  not  only  with  commercial  privileges,  but  with 
judicial  and  executive  functions  of  so  arbitrary  a  kind  that  they 
excited  the  determined  hostility  of  the  Estates  of  Brittany,  whose 
Parliament  of  Rennes  could  not  be  cajoled  or  coerced  into  en- 
registering  its  articles  of  incorporation.  It  therefore  lapsed  in 
1627,  without  ever  having  used  its  capital  in  any  one  of  the  many 
directions  contemplated.  It  was,  however,  the  precursor  of  the 
organization  which  ruled  Canada  for  more  than  thirty  years,  the 
company  of  the  One  Hundred  Associates  of  New  France  or 
Canada — "La  Compagnie  du  Canada,  establie  sous  le  titre  de 
Nouvelle  France  ou  la  Societe  de  Cent  Personnes  du  Canada."  It 
was  evident  to  everyone  that  Canada  would  never  be  colonized 
by  such  private  associations  as  those  controlled  by  de  Monts  or 
de  Caen.  The  failure,  which  was  attributed  bv  the  priests  to  the 
Huguenot  proclivities  of  the  partners,  was  really  due  to  the  spirit 
of  monopoly  which  the  very  terms  of  the  concession  called  into 
being.     It  is  strange  that  a  long-sighted  statesman  like  Richelieu 


206  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

should  have  beheved  he  could  cure  the  abuses  that  had  sprung  up 
in  connection  with  a  small  company  by  creating  a  larger  one,  en- 
dowed with  the  same  exclusive  powers  which  had  been  the  ob- 
vious cause  of  those  abuses. 

There  were  only  eight  or  nine  associates  in  de  Caen's  company. 
Champlain,  in  his  deposition  before  Sir  Henry  Martin,  named  as 
the  partners  whom  he  recollected,  Mons.  Guillaume  de  Caen,  of 
Dieppe;  his  nephew,  Emery  de  Caen,  of  Rouen;  Dolu,  of  Paris; 
Mons.  de  Nouveau,  of  Paris ;  Mons.  Deschenes,  of  St.  Malo ;  with 
them  were  three  or  four  others,  whose  names  he  could  not  remem- 
ber. His  brother-in-law,  Eustace  Boulle,  supplied  the  names  of 
two  of  the  forgotten  partners,  Mons.  Harvey  and  Mons.  Devostre. 

Richelieti  vainly  imagined  that  his  own  assumption  of  the  po- 
sition of  Viceroy  of  Canada  ( he  had  bought  out  the  Duke  de  Ven- 
tadour),  and  his  patronage  of  the  company,  would  ensure  its  ful- 
filling the  mission  assigned  to  it,  no  matter  what  its  constitu- 
tion might  be.  The  bitter  feeling  in  ecclesiastical  circles,  and  the 
jealousy  of  the  mercantile  community,  coupled  with  the  admitted 
failure  of  de  Caen  to  fulfill  his  promises,  made  the  cancellation  of 
his  privileges  a  foregone  conclusion.  The  constitution  of  the  Mor- 
bihan  Company  supplied  certain  of  the  features  which  we 
find  in  that  of  the  company  of  the  One  Hundred  Asso- 
ciates, the  charter  of  which  bears  date  April  29,  1627.  At  this 
very  moment  the  Huguenots  were  marshalling  their  forces,  under 
the  ill-advised  encouragement  of  England  and  Holland,  to  defy 
Louis  XHT.  and  Richelieu,  and  extort  from  them  by  force  of 
arms  a  modified  political  independence.  What  wonder,  therefore, 
that  the  document  was  distinctly  hostile  to  those  sectaries?  There 
were  times  when  English  sovereigns  thought  that  encouraging 
schismatics  to  emigrate  was  the  easiest  way  of  disposing  of  them. 
But  Richelieu  was  made  of  different  stufif  from  the  Stuarts. 

Despite  the  clause  of  the  company's  charter  providing  that 
none  but  natural  born  Frenchmen  holding  the  Catholic  faith 
might  enroll  themselves  as  members,  we  find  that  Emery  de 
Caen  and  his  Huguenot  crew  had  to  be  entrusted  with  the 
dangerous  venture  of  carrying  relief  to  Champlain  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1629.     Richelieu  was  too  wise  a  man  to  be  rigidly  bound 


COMTANY   OF   TIIIi;    HUNDRED   ASSOCIATES.  207 

by  his  own  rules.  ThroMghout  his  whole  career  he  was  regard- 
ed with  distrust  by  the  ultra-Catholics,  on  account  of  his  leniency 
towards  the  Huguenots  after  they  had  been  conquered,  and  on  ac- 
count of  his  willingness  to  ally  himself  with  Protestant  powers  in 
order  to  crush  his  Catholic  enemies.  His  illiberal  colonial 
policy  was  therefore  not  dictated  by  religious  fanaticism,  but  by 
motives  of  statecraft.  It  harmonized  with  the  absolutism  of  his 
political  creed.  As  he  was  unable  to  exterminate  the  Huguenots 
and  eliminate  their  doctrine  from  Old  France,  he  resolved  to 
make  use  of  them  and  their  foreign  allies  to  strengthen  his  position 
at  home  and  abroad.  None  the  less  he  objected  to  them  and  their 
republican  aspirations  ;  and,  in  the  new  society  he  was  founding, 
he  determined  to  prevent  the  growth  of  any  such  political  hetero- 
doxy by  forbidding  the  seed  of  schism  to  be  sown  in  its  virgin  soil. 
To  that  end  he  preferred  to  use  as  his  instruments  the  astute  and 
learned  Jesuits,  rather  than  the  narrow-minded  RecoUet  Friars. 
They  would  be  as  watchful  against  the  introduction  of  heresy  and 
its  political  counterpart  as  the  Dominicans  themselves,  while 
they  would  cultivate  in  the  community  a  higher  and  stronger  type 
of  Catholicism  than  any  of  the  mendicant  orders. 

The  incorporators  of  the  new  company  were  the  Cardinal  him- 
self, the  Sieur  de  Roquemont,  Houel,  Comptroller  General  of  the 
salt  works  in  Brouage,  de  la  Lataignant,  a  bourgeois  of  Calais, 
Dablon,  syndic  of  Dieppe,  Du  Chesne,  magistrate  of  the  town  of 
Havre  de  Grace,  and  Jacques  Castillon,  of  Paris.  The  act,  after 
reciting  the  usual  mixed  motives  which  had  induced  the  Kings 
of  France  to  encourage  colonization,  namely,  to  extend  the 
Faith,  and  with  it  commerce,  goes  on  to  deplore  the  failure 
of  the  previous  company  to  fulfill  the  conditions  of  the 
g"rant,  and  then  declares  that,  in  virtue  of  the  powers  vested  in 
him,  the  said  Lord  Cardinal,  consents  and  agrees,  subject  to  the 
good  pleasure  of  his  Majesty,  to  grant  a  charter  to  the  new  Com- 
pany of  One  Hundred  members,  on  the  following  conditions : 

Before  the  close  of  1628,  three  hundred  mechanics  were  to  be 
transported  to  the  colony,  and  within  fifteen  years  subsequently 
the  number  of  immigrants  was  to  be  increased  to  4,000  souls  of 
both  sexes ;  for  three  years  the  company  was  to  support  the  im- 


208  QUEBEC  IN   THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURV. 

migrants,  after  wiiich  period  they  would  be  expected  to  sup- 
port themselves  by  agriculture  from  the  lands  assigned  to 
them.  No  foreigner  was  to  enter  New  France,  and  no  French- 
man who  did  not  profess  the  Catholic  Faith.  For  every  post 
(habitation)  erected  in  the  colony  during  the  sixteen  years  ter- 
minating in  1643,  the  company  must  support  three  priests  to  labor 
among  the  Indians,  though  they  may  commute  this  charge  by  a 
grant  of  cleared  land.  As  a  return  for  the  assumption  of  these 
burdens  and  the  fulfillment  of  these  obligations,  an  absolute  trans- 
fer is  made  to  the  company  of  all  the  lands  which  France  claims 
between  Florida  and  the  Arctic  Circle  and  between  Newfoundland 
and  the  Great  Lakes,  with  all  lands  watered  by  the  tributaries  of 
the  St.  Lawrence  which  they  may  acquire  by  exploration,  the  King, 
as  feudal  lord,  reserving  only  "le  ressort  de  la  foi  et  hommage" 
and  claiming  as  mark  of  fealty  a  gold  crown  of  the  weight  of  eight 
inarks,  on  his  accession.  The  support  of  the  officers  of  justice,  who 
were  to  be  nominated  by  the  company,  but  confirmed  by  the  Crown, 
is  to  fall  on  the  company.  The  company  is  to  have  the  right  of  sov- 
ereign power  in  matters  of  offence  and  defence.  Lands  within 
the  territory  ceded  to  the  company  and  by  the  company  to  the 
seigneurs  are  to  be  held  as  under  previous  grants.  Exclusive 
right  to  traffic  in  furs  is  granted  in  perpetuity  to  the  company, 
and  exclusive  fishing  rights  for  fifteen  years.  The  inhabitants 
nay  traffic  with  the  Indians,  but  must  sell  what  they  purchase 
to  the  company  or  its  factors,  and  the  company  must  buy  beaver 
skins  at  forty  sols  Tournois  apiece.  The  King  loans  the  company 
two  ships,  which,  if  lost  otherwise  than  by  capture  in  war,  are  to 
be  replaced  by  them.  He  also  makes  over  to  them  four  little  brass 
culverins.  As  an  inducement  to  skilled  workmen  to  immigrate,  ar- 
tisans who  have  worked  for  six  years  in  Canada  on  returning 
to  France  may  assume  the  title  of  maitres  dc  chefs  d'ocuvrcs,  and 
open  shops  in  Paris  and  other  towns.  And  to  encourage  manu- 
facturing in  Canada,  it  is  provided  that  all  manufactured  goods 
may  enter  France  free  of  duty  for  fifteen  years.  No  one 
is  to  lose  rank  by  engaging  in  trade,  or  investing  in  the  stock  of 
the  company.  On  the  contrary,  his  Majesty  will  ennoble  twelve 
of  the  plebeian  members  of  the  company.     All  descendants  of 


COMPANY  OF  THE  HUNDRED  ASSOCIATES.  209 

French  immigrants   and  all  converted  Indians  are  to  be  free  citi- 
zens, and  entitled  to  all  the  privileges  of  citizens  of  France. 

The  first  signature  of  the  document  is  that  of  Armand,  Cardinal 
Richelieu,  the  second  that  of  de  Roquemont,  the  unfortunate  Ad- 
miral who,  when  in  charge  of  the  first  fleet  sent  by  the  company, 
had  to  fight  Kirke  in  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence.  The  articles  of 
partnership  adopted  by  the  associates,  and  approved  by  the  Cardi- 
nal, fixed  the  capital  at  300,000  livres,  to  be  subscribed  in  equal 
proportions  of  3.000  livres  by  each  of  the  One  Hundred  Associ- 
ates, and  payable  1,000  livres  January  i,  1628,  and  the  balance  as 
called  for  by  the  directors ;  but  any  subscriber  may  withdraw  by 
forfeiting  his  first  payment,  provided  no  profits  have  been  di- 
vided. Of  the  directors  one-third  at  least  shall  be  merchants.  Then 
follow  the  rights  and  duties  of  the  board,  which  are  very  ample. 
The  board  is  not  compelled  to  call  to  its  council  any  of  the  share- 
holders, unless  when  recommending  appointments  to  the  King, 
or  deeding  land  in  excess  of  two  lumdred  acres,  in  which  case 
twenty  shareholders,  including  the  members  of  the  board,  in  per- 
son or  by  proxy,  must  deliberate  in  the  presence  of  the  Intendant, 
and  no  act  of  the  board  shall  be  valid  unless  signed  by  the  Se- 
cretary and  four  directors.  The  principal  office  of  the  company 
is  to  be  in  Paris ;  but  offices  may  be  opened  in  the  most  notable 
maritime  and  inland  towns  of  the  realm,  if  the  business  of  the 
company  should  in  time  warrant  it.  The  directors  living  out  of 
Paris  may  be  represented  at  the  board  meeting  by  proxy.  All  the 
fiduciary  officers  must  keep  proper  cash  books,  journals  and 
ledgers,  and  full  statements  of  account  must  be  sent  to  the  Paris 
office  within  three  months  of  the  sailing  and  arrival  of  vessels, 
and  to  the  local  boards  at  Rouen,  Bordeaux,  and  other  local  of- 
fices, within  one  month  after  the  sailing  or  arrival  of  the  com- 
pany's packet.  The  directors  or  agents  are  forbidden  to  involve 
the  company  in  debt  in  excess  of  its  capital.  All  the  profits  accru- 
ing from  the  company's  operations  during  the  first  year  are  to  be 
funded ;  afterwards,  one-third  of  the  profits  may  be  distributed, 
and  two-thirds  funded.  All  wages  are  to  be  paid  by  the  directors, 
but  directors  themselves  are  to  receive  no  other  compensation 
than  a  pound  of  white  candles  and  the  privilege  of  taking  part 


2IO  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

in  any  meeting  of  the  company's  representatives  anywhere;  but 
in  case  of  travel  on  company's  affairs,  they  are  to  be  compensated. 
The  directors  are  authorized  to  devote  500  louis  a  year  to  char- 
ity— but  only  out  of  the  profits.  The  treasurer  shall  be  appointed 
by  the  board.  He  shall  keep  a  set  of  books,  and  annually  make 
a  balance  sheet.  He  shall  make  an  annual  statement  which  shall 
be  audited  by  the  Intendant  and  the  directors,  and  the  audit  shall 
be  final,  as  though  all  directors  were  present.  Any  shareholder  of 
the  company  may  subdivide  or  sell  part  of  his  share,  but  he  and 
his  associate  have  only  one  vote.  But  any  shareholder  may  sell 
his  share,  and  the  purchaser  of  a  competent  associate  shall  be 
recognized  as  an  original  associate.  The  creditors  of  an  associate 
must  accept  the  published  statement  of  the  company's  affairs,  and 
must  submit  to  the  regulations  of  the  company  without  enjoying 
any  vote.  In  case  of  the  death  of  an  associate,  the  heirs  must  ap- 
point one  of  the  members  to  represent  the  interests  of  the  asso- 
ciate. 

The  Cardinal  is  requested  to  nominate  as  Intendant  of  the  com- 
pany's affairs  the  Sieur  de  Lauzon,  who  shall  be  chairman  of  the 
board,  and  preside  at  its  weekly  and  at  all  extraordinary  meet- 
ings. The  board  is  to  consist  of  twelve  directors,  of  whom  six 
are  to  be  residents  of  Paris  and  the  others  of  towns  within  the 
realm.  The  twelve  directors  are  to  hold  office  for  two  years, 
and  at  the  biennial  election  six  of  the  old  directors  are  to 
be  re-elected.  The  annual  meeting  is  to  be  held  at  the 
Intendant's  house  in  Paris,  or  some  other  convenient  place, 
on  the  15th  day  of  January.  Associates  who  cannot  attend 
are  requested  to  express  in  writing  their  views  as  to  the  manage- 
ment of  the  company.  At  the  annual  meeting  measures  shall 
be  carried  by  a  majority  of  votes.  The  directors  are  empowered 
to  modify  these  by-laws  as  circumstances  may  suggest.  The 
above  articles  were  confirmed  by  the  King  on  May  6,  1628.  Such 
were  the  ample  powers  of  the  company  of  the  One  Hundred  As- 
sociates, but  five  years  had  yet  to  elapse  before  they  were  put  into 
execution. 

England  in  1627  took  up  the  cause  of  the  Huguenots.  Buck- 
ingham, Charles  the  First's  favorite,  in  revenge  for  his  slighted 


_/;!       THE    SIEGE    OF    LA    ROCIIELLE.  iZtl 

addresses  to  Queen  Anne  of  Austria,  Louis  XIII. 's  queen,  is 
said  to  have  instigated  the  Huguenots  to  make  their  fatal  and 
fooHsh,  and  what  proved  to  be  Ihf  ir  last  real  struggle,  for  political 
power.  At  any  rate,  wdiether  England  fomented  the  trouble  or  not, 
she  sent  a  fleet  under  Buckingham  to  help  tiie  rebels.  Without  any 
declaration  of  war,  the  English  commander  appeared  before 
Rochelle  in  July,  1627,  for  the  purpose  of  raising"  the  siege  of 
that  place.  But,  even  as  a  military  engineer,  Richelieu  was  more 
than  a  match  for  his  rebellious  countrymen,  aided  by  their  power- 
ful sympathizers  ;  for  the  memorable  siege  terminated  by  the  fall 
of  Rochelle  on  October  29,  1628. 

It  was  in  the  beginning  of  the  year  1628  that  the  company  of 
the  One  Hundred  Associates  was  to  begin  its  active  operations. 
As  a  first  step  towards  carrying  out  their  pledges,  they  fitted  out  a 
fleet  under  the  Sieur  de  Roquemont  to  convey  colonists  and  priests 
to  the  colony.  De  Roquemont  was  the  bearer  of  a  commission  to 
Champlain  to  act  as  commandant  in  New  France,  and  in  that  ca- 
pacity to  begin  his  administration  by  taking  an  inventory  of  de 
Caen's  property,  after  which  he  was  to  make  a  report  as  to  the 
state  of  the  colony,  and  forward  it,  with  the  inventory,  to  Riche- 
lieu. It  was  many  a  day  before  Champlain  received  his  com- 
mission, and,  as  we  have  seen,  he  made  the  inventory  not  for  the 
French  Minister  of  Marine,  but  for  Admiral  Kirke.  De  Roque- 
mont's  fleet  escaped  two  Rochelle  ships  in  the  Channel,  but,  as 
already  narrated,  fell  in  with  Kirke's  fleet  in  the  Gulf.* 

While  Kirke  and  other  brave,  restless  fellows  of  the  west  coast 
of  England  were  taking  advantage  of  the  war  to  gratify  their  love 
of  adventure  and  fill  their  pockets,  the  nation  was  fretting  over 
Buckingham's  disgraceful  campaign  and  retreat  from  before  Ro- 
chelle.   Not  only  had  this  decplv  wounded  the  national  pride  and 

*  Kirke,  in  his  deposition  before  Sir  Henry  Martin,  Knight,  says  that,  in  the 
expedition  against  the  French  in  1628.  he  was  sent  forth  at  the  charge  of  his  late 
father,  Gervan  Kirke,  and  other  merchants  in  London.  The  expedition  of  i62() 
was  fitted  out  by  Sir  William  Alexander  the  younger — the  individual  to  whom 
Charles  I.  had  given  such  a  sweeping  grant  of  Newfoundland  and  Nova  Scotia — 
by  Kirke's  father,  and  others.  Sir  William  had  a  commission  as  a  privateer 
under  the  broad  seal  of  England,  and  his  instructions  vi-ere  to  transplant  the 
French  from  Canada,  and  utterly  to  expel  them — a  task  which  he  executed  with 
remarkable  thoroughness. 


212  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

hurt  the  Protestant  cause,  but  it  had  emptied  the  already  impover- 
ished treasury.  It  was  in  his  attempt  to  replenish  it  in  his  own 
peculiar,  arbitrary  way  that  Charles  involved  himself  in  the  disas- 
trous war  with  his  people,  which  was  destined  to  be  much  more 
momentous  in  its  bearing  on  popular  liberty  than  any  temporary 
advantages  which  the  Rochellois  might  have  won  through  Eng- 
land's assistance. 

It  was  in  November,  1627,  that  Buckingham,  with  his  dis- 
comfited fleet  and  army,  returned.  The  Commons  met  in  the  fol- 
lowing March,  and  Charles  was  compelled  to  sign  the  famous 
Petition  of  Rights  on  May  28,  in  order  to  obtain  relief  from  his 
pecuniary  embarrassment.  Neither  his  temper  nor  that  of  the 
people  was  improved  by  the  military  events  of  1627.  A  new  ex- 
pedition to  relieve  Rochelle  was  demanded  by  public  opinion, 
but  not  under  the  leadership  of  the  gallant  courtier.  Neverthe- 
less, despite  the  national  protest,  another  fleet  was  about  to  sail 
under  the  same  amateur  general  when  Felton's  dagger  relieved 
him  of  the  command.  Charles  may  have  been  glad  in  the  spring 
of  1628  that  Kirke  and  his  friends  should  wage  war  on  their  own 
account,  to  his  and  their  possible  profit ;  but  before  Kirke  set  sail 
again  in  1629  for  the  St.  Lawrence,  Charles  had  learned  that  his 
bitterest  enemies  were  those  of  his  own  household,  and  that  he  had 
more  to  fear  from  his  own  people  than  from  his  wife's  kinsfolk 
across  the  channel.  He  was  not  reluctant,  therefore,  to  sign  the 
treaty  of  Suze  on  April  24,  1629.* 

Kirke  had  sailed  from  Greenwich  on  the  15th  of  the  same 
month  with  a  fleet  of  six  ships  and  two  pinnaces,  to  pick 
the  fruit  he  had  left  hanging  on  the  tree  the  autumn  previously, 
for  he  knew  full  well  that  Champlain  could  oppose  no  resistance, 

*  Article  VII.  of  Treaty  of  Suze.  Inasmuch  as  man}'  vessels  with  letters  of 
Marque  and  armaments  cannot  be  advised  of  this  peace  nor  receive  orders  to  ab- 
stain from  all  hostile  acts,  it  is  agreed  by  this  article  that  nothing  which  may 
happen  within  two  month-  after  this  agreement  shall  derogate  from  or  prevent 
this  peace  or  interfere  with  the  good  will  between  the  two  crowns;  it  being,  how- 
ever, agreed  that  anything  seized  within  two  months  efter  the  signature  of  this 
treaty  shall  be  restored  by  the  one  party  to  the  other.  By  the  terms  of  Article  Til. 
of  the  Treatv  of  St.  Germain  en  Laye  eight  days  are  allowed  the  British  com- 
manders of  fortified  posts  to  vacate  them  with  their  arms  and  persona!  effects;  but 
three  weeks  in  addition,  or  if  necessary  a  longer  time,  are  allowed  civilians  to  de- 
part with  their  property. 


KIRKE   IN    POSSESSION    OF    QUEBEC.  213 

and  must  capitulate  on  demand.  He  may  therefore  have  been 
ignorant  when  he  captured  Quebec,  of  the  turn  affairs  had  taken, 
though  Boulle  told  Champlain,  when  they  met  as  prisoners  at  Ta- 
dousac,  that  Emery  de  Caen,  whom  he  had  sighted  in  the  Gulf 
before  his  surrender  to  Kirke,  had  told  him  of  the  signing 
of  the  treaty.  He  had,  of  course,  conmiunicated  the  news  to 
the  general  after  his  capture,  but  it  was  probably  the  first  notice 
Kirke  had  received  of  it.  The  conversation  recorded  after  the 
capture  of  de  Caen  would  also  imply  that  he  warned  Kirke 
that  he  was  acting  piratically.  It  may  have  mattered  little  at  the 
time  to  an  adventurer  like  Kirke,  who  was  probably  not  over- 
scrupulous as  to  treaties,  but  it  mattered  much  ultimately,  for  it 
gave  Charles  a  reason  for  disallowing  his  acts,  restoring  the  con- 
quered territory,  and  insisting  on  the  surrender  of  the  booty.  The 
war  had  been  entered  on  by  England  without  provocation,  and 
once  Rochelle  had  fallen,  there  was  no  valid  excuse  for  its  con- 
tinuance— the  more  so  as  Richelieu  had  treated  his  conquered 
foes  with  great  magnanimity  and  leniency.  There  was,  there- 
fore, good  reason  for  making  peace  and  restoring  territory  that 
had  been  taken  after  peace  had  been  signed.  Nevertheless  three 
years  passed  before  the  Ucnr-dc-lis  again  floated  over  Fort  St. 
Louis.  LeClercqsays  that  the  delay  was  due  to  indifference  and 
doubt  as  to  the  value  of  New  France,  for  Old  France  judged  of  its 
capabilities  by  Cartier's  and  Champlain's  experience.  There  is 
justification  for  this  supposition  in  the  fact  that  the  diplomatic 
correspondence  betrayed,  on  the  part  of  France,  greater  urgency 
to  secure  payment  for,  or  return  of,  the  beaver  skins  taken  from 
de  Caen's  stores  than  the  restitution  of  the  conquered  territory. 
This  anxiety  about  de  Caen's  property  is  sufficient  to  dispel  the 
suspicion  hinted  at  by  Richelieu  himself — though  it  is  difficult  to 
see  how  it  could  have  Ijeen  seriously  entertained — that  the  Kirkes 
were  instigated  to  attack  the  French  possession  by  de  Caen  in  re- 
venge for  the  cancellation  of  his  trading  privileges.  It  needed  no 
such  incentive  to  induce  an  enterprising  family  of  merchant  adven- 
turers like  the  Kirkes,  father  and  sons,  to  attack  an  enemy  at  once 
so  defenseless  and  so  wealthy  as  the  de  Caen  trading  company, 
whose  profits,  great  as  they  were,  were  probably  grossly  exag- 


214  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

geratecl  by  public  rumor,  and  wbose  stock  of  furs  in  the  Quebec 
storehouse  may  have  been  supposed  to  be  many  times  greater  than 
it  actually  was.  A  still  stronger  argument  against  such  an  in- 
jurious supposition  is  that  de  Caen  was  in  1632  commissioned  to 
receive  back  the  post  of  Quebec  from  David  Kirke,  and  permitted 
to  enjoy  the  fur  trade  for  a  year  longer.* 

During  Kirke's  occupation  France  made  no  serious  demonstra- 
tion against  Canada ;  neither  did  the  company  of  the  One  Hun- 
dred Associates  make  any  pretense  of  entering  on  the  enjoyment 
of  their  rights.  On  the  other  hand,  England  took  no  active 
measures  to  put  its  newly  acquired  territory  into  a  state 
of  defence,  and  Englishmen  showed  no  inclination  to  or- 
ganize colonization  schemes  for  peopling  the  St.  Lawrence, 
under  the  instigation  either  of  religious  enthusiasm  or  of 
mercantile  gain.  Charles  seems  to  have  granted  somewhat  the 
same  exclusive  trading  advantages  to  a  mercantile  company  or- 
ganized by  Kirke,  and  known  as  the  Company  of  Canada,  as  had 
been  enjoyed  by  the  de  Caen  company ;  but  the  records  of  the 
period  (Colonial  Papers,  Vol.  6,  Art.  33),  show  that  Kirke  had  no 
more  power  than  de  Alonts  or  de  Caen  to  repress  poaching.  Eng- 
land at  this  moment  was  drifting  rapidly  into  civil  war,  and  the 
thoughts  of  that  energetic  section  of  the  people  which  might 
have  supplied  colonists  were  directed  to  more  urgent  issues 
than  the  driving  of  a  few  Papists  from  the  forests  of  New 
France.  The  belief  in  England  regarding  the  interior  of  the  con- 
tinent was  that  it  was  a  land  of  snow  and  ice,  more  desolate  than 
even  the  barren  coast  of  New  England,  and  not,  therefore,  a  tempt- 
ing field  for  agriculture.  There  was,  consequently,  no  outcr\-,  ex- 
cept on  the  part  of  Kirke  and  his  fellow  adventurers,  when  Charles 
agreed  to  restore  the  fields  of  snow  and  ice  to  Louis  XIIL  There 
might  have  been  some  opposition,  though  it  would  have  availed 
naught,  had  it  been  known  that  he  sold  Kirke's  conquests  in  the 
New  World  for  800,000  crowns — a  sum  really  due  by  France  as 
the  unpaid  balance  of  his   wife's  dowry,  but  which  the  French 

*  Le  Clercq  puts  the  compan  '^  trade  in  beaver  skins  alone  at  100,000  crowns 
annually. 


AN    UNPROFITABLE    CONQUEST.  21 5 

King,  or  rather  the  French  CarcUnal,  refused  to  pay  unless  Port 
Royal,  Quebec,  and  all  that  the  Kirkes  had  wrenched  from  France 
in  1 628- 1 629  were  restored.  Charles  needed  the  money  urgently, 
wherewith  to  fight  his  subjects,  but  the  surrender  cost  England 
and  her  colonists  many  a  million.  Nevertheless,  whatever  the  mo- 
tives for  the  restoration,  Quebec,  captured  three  months  after  the 
treaty  of  peace  had  been  signed,  belonged  rightfully  to  France, 
and  was  rightfully  restored  to  her. 

None  the  less  must  we  sympathize  with  Captain  David 
Kirke  and  his  brothers.  An  empty  title  was  but  poor  compensa- 
tion for  what  they  did,  could  the  full  value  of  the  achieve- 
ment have  been  foreseen ;  and  the  title  was  all  they  actually 
received,  for  the  skins  they  brought  back  in  1629  were  seized  and 
ultimately  surrendered  to  de  Caen,  and  it  is  not  very  clear  whether 
Kirke's  legitimate  claim  against  de  Caen  for  provisions  supplied 
to  the  starving  colony  and  for  transportation  to  France  of  the 
famished  colonists  was  ever  settled.  He  not  unreasonably  con- 
tended that  what  he  gave  was  worth  more  than  what  he  had  seized, 
and  that,  had  the  case  been  tried  in  England,  de  Caen  would  have 
been  required  to  pay  him,  and  not  he  de  Caen.  De  Caen 
brought  in  a  bill  for  266,000  livres,  although  Champlain 
estimated  the  total  number  of  beaver  skins  handed  over  at 
only  3,000,  from  which  had  to  be  deducted  those  which  each 
returning  Frenchman  was  allowed  to  appropriate  and  carry 
to  France,  leaving  a  remainder  of  1,713.  While  the  miser- 
able beaver  skins  were  deposited,  by  way  of  sequestration,  under 
lock  and  key  by  order  of  the  Court  of  x^dmiralty,  a  certain  Thomas 
Felty,  merchant,  was  accused  and  imprisoned  in  the  Fleet  for 
stealing  some  of  them.  Sir  W.  Alexander  and  Captain  David 
Kirke  and  their  associates  were  meanwhile  complaining  to 
the  Admiralty  that  they  could  not  lock  up  the  St.  Lawrence 
securely  against  illicit  skippers,  who  were  robl^ng  them  of 
their  privileged  trade.  There  was  thus  trouble  and  complaint 
and  embarrassment  on  all  sides,  and  apparently  little  profit,  de- 
spite the  great  value  of  the  fur  trade  and  the  prizes  taken  by 
Kirke  in  1628-1629.  Poaching  and  suits  for  damages,  and  the 
short  term  of  the  trading  monopoly  enjoyed  by  Kirke  and  his 


2l6  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

business  co-partners,  must  have  made  the  first  conquest  of  Quebec 
a  losing  venture. 

In  the  testimony  taken  in  the  case  of  the  adventurers  against 
the  owners  of  the  "EHza  of  London,"  one  of  the  poachers,  some 
curious  figures  are  given  which  bear  on  the  vahie  of  the  St. 
Lawrence  trade.  Thomas  Roycroft  says  that  he  was  wilhng  to 
trade  tiiree  for  one.  which  meant  three  elk  skins  for  one  blanket. 
John  Baker,  Mariner,  of  the  "Eliza,"  says  he  brought  to  Eng- 
land 55^  casks  of  beaver  skins  and  some  elk  skins.  His  share 
was  40  pounds  of  beaver  skins.  Captain  Eustace  Mann  says  that 
his  ship  brought  from  Canada  531  bear  skins,  which  were  sold 
for  about  £500,  and  100  odd  elk  skins,  which  were  sold  for  about 
£100.  A  certain  Samuel  Pierce  Bever  makes  admission  that  he 
bought  880  pounds  weight  of  beaver  skins  in  six  hogsheads, 
for  which  he  paid  iSSo,  and  that  he  and  others  bought 
about  300  pounds  more  from  members  of  the  crew,  whence  we 
would  gather  that  beaver  skins  w^ere  worth  the  high  price  of 
ii  per  pound  weight,  and  bear  and  moose  skins  about  £1  apiece, 
and  that  the  Indians  were  willing  to  exchange  three  moose  skins 
for  one  blanket.  The  trade  in  peltries  must  therefore  have  been 
temptingly  profitable,  and  we  can  appreciate  Kirke's  and  his  as- 
sociates' indignation  at  having  to  surrender  it,  together  with  the 
post  of  Quebec.  Although  during  the  three  years  of  occupation  no 
pretence  was  made  to  colonize  the  St.  Lawrence,  trade  must  have 
been  more  actively  conducted  than  it  had  been  by  either  de  Alonts 
or  de  Caen,  for  in  a  note  of  such  things  as  this  company  had  in 
Canada  and  the  number  of  its  men,  made  before  its  surrender, 
the  following  particulars  are  given : 

"A  note  of  all  such  things  as  the  company  hath  in  Canada  and 
the  number  of  men. 

"Imprimis  they  have  above  200  persons  in  the  fort  and  habyta- 
tion  of  Kebec  and  gone  up  from  400  leages  in  the  countrv  for 
further  discoverys. 

"In  the  fort  there  is  16  peeces  of  ordnance  and  8  murderers, 
75  musketts  and  25  fowling  peeces  and  10  arkebusses  a  Croake 
and  30  pistolls  8  dozen  of  pikes  and  24  holbeards  and  40  Corse- 
letts  and  10  armors  of  proofife  and  6  Targetts. 


A  MEMORABLE  INVENTORY.  217 

"In  the  sayd  fort  there  is  2000  powder  for  the  ordnance,  300 
of  musketts  powder,  and  one  hundred  and  half  of  fowHnge  pow- 
der, Rownd  shott,  burd  shott,  Langer  shott,  and  chrosshar  shott, 
enough  for  the  use  of  there  powder,  and  10  barrells  more  which 
the  Maye  have  of  the  store  of  3  pinaces  which  are  there  furnished 
with  6  peeces  of  ordnance  a  peece  and  6  murderers  a  peece  and 
5  barills  a  powder  a  peece  and  all  thingcs  convenyent  for  their 
Rigginge  and  Munition  of  war. 

"The  sayd  200  persons  vittled  accordinge  to  his  Majesties  al- 
lowance att  sea  for  18  monthes  besides  what  they  fownd  upon  the 
ground  which  is  able  to  find  them  6  months  more  soe  that  the  are 
very  well  vittled  for  2  years  and  within  towe  yeers  if  they  worke 
as  the  have  beegon  the  wilbee  able  to  subsist  of  themselves. 

■'There  is  goods  for  to  trade  with  the  natives  of  the  Contrey 
more  then  wee  are  able  to  vent  in  2  yeeres  which  goods  are  no 
wheare  vendable  butt  in  that  contry  and  which  goods  stands  use  in 
6000  1.  starlinge  besides  charges  which  doth  amount  to  6000  1. 
more. 

.  "All  sort  of  tooles  for  smithes  millers  masones  plasterers  Car- 
pendars  Joyners  bricklers  whillons  bakers  bruers  ship-carpenters 
shoomakers  and  taylors. 

"10  Shallops  fitted  with  bases  for  the  head  and  all  other  fur- 
niture. 

"All  sort  of  tooles  beelonginge  to  the  fortyfication. 

"The  abovesayde  fort  is  soe  well  situated  that  the  are  able  tc 
withstand  loooo  men  and  will  not  care  for  them,  for  whatsoever 
the  can  doe,  for  in  winter  they  cannot  stay  in  the  countrev  soe 
that  whosesoever  goes  to  beesidge  them  the  cannot  stave  there 
above  3  monthes  in  all  in  which  time  the  niuskett  will  soe  tor- 
ment them  that  noe  man  is  able  to  bee  abroad  in  centrv  or  thrench- 
es  day  nor  night  without  loosing  there  sightes  for  att  least  eyght 
dayes. 

"So  that  if  please  his  Majestic  to  keepe  it  we  doe  not  care  what 
French  or  any  other  can  doe  thoe  the  have  a  100  sayle  of  shipps 
and  1 0000  men  as  above  sayde. 

"(Sur  le  dos  est  ecrit.) 


2l8  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

"Note  of  all  such  thingcs  as  the  Company  hath  in  Canada  and 
the  number  of  men."* 

Althoug-h  we  may  infer  from  the  above  memorandum  that  the 
Kirkes  were  not  idle,  the  details  of  the  occupation  are  meager. 
Champlain  closes  his  doleful  narrative  with  the  gossip  of  two 
Frenchmen  who  returned  with  Thomas  Kirke  in  October,  1630. 
It  would  seem  that  the  Kirkes  removed  their  headquarters  from 
Tadousac  to  Quebec,  with  a  view,  as  Champlain  reasonably  sup- 
posed, to  concentrating  their  forces  in  anticipation  of  a  retaliatory 
attack.  In  the  summer  of  1630,  Captain  Thomas  Kirke  made  a 
trading  voyage  to  Quebec  with  two  ships,  and  returned  with  300,- 
000  livres  worth  of  peltries,  if  we  are  to  believe  the  report  of  these 
two  Frenchmen — one  a  carpenter,  the  other  a  laborer — who 
elected  to  return  to  Old  France  with  him.  They  reported  a  se- 
vere winter,  which  had  carried  off  fourteen  of  the  English,  and 
a  thunder  storm  which  had  killed  three  or  four  more,  together 
with  two  dogs,  and  played  havoc  with  the  fort,  and  stated  further 
that  the  English  showed  as  little  inclination  to  engage  in  honest 
husbandry,  or  to  provide  for  their  own  support,  as  the  French  had 
done. 

In  163 1  Richelieu  granted  Emery  de  Caen  a  passport  to  trade 
in  the  St.  Lawrence,  but  the  Kirkes  did  not  confirm  it.  They 
treated  him.  however,  with  their  usual  courtesv,  and,  had  there 
been  skins  enough  oiTering  for  both,  they  would  have  allowed 
him  his  share ;  but  the  supply  was  short  that  summer,  and 
the  best  terms  they  would  accord  him  was  permission  to 
land  his  merchandise  and  a  clerk,  and  to  barter  his  goods  for  pel- 
tries during  the  winter,  if  the  Indians  should  bring  in  any.  De 
Caen,  on  his  return,  regaled  Champlain  with  a  whole  batch  of 
bad  news,  which,  despite  the  ex-governor's  generous  nature,  was 
probably  more  or  less  grateful  to  him.  One  of  the  stories  was 
that  the  Protestant  minister  had,  with  the  renegade  French- 
men, fomented  a  mutiny  among  the  English  soldiers  against 
Louis  Kirke.  The  plot  was  discovered  and  Kirke's  life  was 
saved.      He    dealt    leniently    with    the    dupes    of    the    minister, 

*  Colonial  Papers,  Vol.  VI.,  N.  38,  and  Laverdiere,  Champlain,  page  1434. 


CARDINAL  RICHELIEU   AND    HIS   ENEMIES.  2ig 

but  him  he  imprisoned  for  six  months  in  the  Jesuit  house,  to  the 
no  slight  inconvenience  of  the  pious  French,  for,  as  the  Abbe  Fail- 
Ion  tells  us,  while  it  was  used  as  a  prison  no  public  service  could 
be  held  in  it.  The  whole  story  is  probably  composed  of  clerical 
glosses  upon  some  minor  incidents.  It  is  repeated  with  appropri- 
ate reflections  in  Father  Le  Jeune's  Relations  of  1632.  In  so  far 
as  can  be  ascertained,  the  whole  colony  seems  to  have  been  on 
friendly  terms  with  the  conquerors,  and  the  rebellious  minister 
had  other  occupation  than  inciting  to  murder,  for  on  the  19th  of 
February,  163 1,  that  is.  during  the  English  occupation,  there  being 
no  priests,  the  daughter  of  Guillaume  Couillard  was  christened 
by  the  Protestant  minister.  Louis  Kirke  stood  as  godfather,  and 
the  wife  of  the  surgeon,  Adrien  Duchene,  was  godmother.  (Tan- 
guay,  Diet.  Genealogique.     Note  to  page  142.) 

On  July  13th,  1632,  Quebec  was  restored  to  France,  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  treaty  of  St.  Germain-en-Laye,  signed  March 
29th,  1632.  The  event  occurred  when  the  power  of  King  Louis 
XIII.  and  the  influence  of  the  great  Cardinal-Minister  were  ap- 
proaching their  zenith,  though  the  summer  of  1632  was  a  critical 
period  in  the  life  of  both.  RicheHeu  in  'May  of  that  year,  had 
brought  Marechal  Marillac  to  the  scaffold  for  conspiring  with  the 
Queen  Mother ;  and  when  the  apparently  insignificant  act  of  trans- 
ferring a  paltry  fort  in  the  wild  forests  of  the  New  World  was  be- 
ing accomplished,  a  serious  revolt  was  in  progress  headed  by  Gas- 
ton d'Orleans,  the  King's  brother,  and  aided  1)y  the  Due  de  Mont- 
morency, against  "the  disturbers  of  the  general  peace,  the  enemies 
of  the  King  and  the  Royal  House,  the  dissipators  of  the  State,  and 
the  tyrants  both  of  men  of  quality  and  of  the  common  people,"  as 
the  conspirators  styled  the  Cardinal.  But  the  able  minister,  thus  de- 
signated, triumphed  :  the  Duke,  brilliant  and  jiopular  as  he  was, 
failed.  On  October  30th.  when  the  dreary  winter  was  gathering 
over  the  resuscitated  but  still  languid  colony,  the  head  of  Mont- 
morency, the  former  Viceroy  of  New  France,  fell  on  the  block. 
The  most  popular  man  in  France  sacrificed  himself  to  a  craven 
coward,  the  King's  brother,  who  earned  his  own  safetv  bv  swear- 
ing love  and  submission  to  all  the  King's  advisers,  and  especially 
to  Richelieu,  his  bitterest  enemy.   The  audacity  shown  by  the  Car- 


220  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

dinal  in  thus  punisliing  hy  deatli  one  of  the  great  nobles  and  the 
people's  favorite  for  aiding  a  royal  rebel,  was  not  only  the  last 
act  of  that  tragical  drama  of  sectional  strife  which  closed  the 
feudal  age,  but  it  riveted  on  France  the  shackles  of  monarchical 
absolutism.  In  the  death  roll  were  included,  with  the  popular 
hero,  a  number  of  his  personal  followers.  Thus  the  feudal  lord 
and  his  feudal  retainers  fell  together,  because  they  ventured  to 
aid  an  aspiring  royal  rebel  against  the  legitimate  King. 

All  this  occurred  when  New  France  was  receiving  its  con- 
stitution from  the  Cardinal's  hands,  and  it  was  therefore  of  the 
deepest  significance  to  Canada,  for  the  colonial  plans  of  the 
autocrat  were  sure  to  bear  the  stamp  of  his  domestic  policy.  Ab- 
solutism had  triumphed  in  France,  and  absolutism  must  there- 
fore be  the  rule  on  the  St.  Lawrence.  Popular  liberty  must  never 
be  allowed  even  to  raise  its  voice ;  and  thus  it  would  never  require 
to  be  silenced.  Xew  France  must  be  quarantined  against  the 
highly  contagious  disease  of  religious  freedom,  and  to  that  end 
religious  discussion  must  be  prohibited.  Intendants  and  military 
governors  must  be  sent  out  armed  with  full  power  to  direct  the 
energies  of  the  people  -into  innocent  paths ;  in  other  words,  to 
thwart  any  aspirations  towards  self-government.  The  Jesuits 
also  must  be  sent  out  to  control  religious  thought  and  confine  it 
within  prescribed  channels.  The  latter  object  was  accomplished 
so  efl"ectually  that,  not  only  was  Protestantism  excluded,  but  such 
mild  deviation  from  strict  orthodoxy  as  Jansenism,  or  even  Quiet- 
ism, did  not  escape  their  vigilant  scrutiny. 

In  Europe  Richelieu  was  led,  as  we  have  seen,  by  political  ne- 
cessity to  tolerate  the  Huguenots  in  France  and  ally  himself  with 
the  great  Protestant  champion,  Gustavus  Adolphus,  against  Cath- 
olic Spain  and  Austria ;  but  in  America,  as  nothing  was  to  be 
feared  from  Spain,  still  less  from  Austria,  while  everything  was 
to  be  feared  from  the  influence  of  the  neighboring  English  col- 
onies, all  the  machinery  of  Church  and  State  was  designed  to  pre- 
vent the  introduction  from  that  quarter  of  pernicious  doctrines 
and  examples.  English  statesmen  had  been  glad  to  see  dis- 
sent emigrate :  Richelieu  decided  that,  if  there  was  to  be  a  New 
France  created  over  the  sea,  it  must  be  moulded  into  exact  con- 


RETROCESSION    OF    QUEBEC    TO    FRANCE.  221 

forniity  with  his  theory  of  arbitrary  government  and  the  most 
conservative  traditions  of  old  France. 

Neither  he  nor  the  commercial  company  of  his  creation  seems 
to  have  been  very  earnest  in  carrying  out  their  colonization 
schemes.  The  new  company  of  the  One  Hundred  Associates 
made  a  futile  effort  to  fulfill  their  contract  in  1629.  They  sent 
Captain  Daniel,  of  Dieppe,  in  command  of  four  ships  and  a  bark, 
to  carry  emigrants  and  supplies  to  Quebec,  Champlain  being  com- 
missioned as  their  representative.  On  reaching  the  Great  Banks, 
Daniel  heard  that  a  certain  Sir  James  Stuart,  who  claimed  kin- 
ship with  the  royal  family  of  England,  had  established  a  fishing 
station  on  the  Island  of  Cape  Breton,  and,  instead  of  fulfilling  his 
commission,  he  took  Stuart  and  his  comrades  prisoners  and  re- 
turned with  them  to  France. 

The  Jesuits  chartered  a  ship  and  sailed  in  the  spring  for  Que- 
bec, but  were  driven  ashore  on  the  Nova  Scotia  coast.  Some  were 
drowned,  some  were  rescued  by  a  Basque  fisherman,  but  of  these 
only  Father  Lalemant  survived  a  second  disaster  off  St.  Sebastian. 
The  consort  ship  of  the  Jesuits,  commanded  by  Joubert,  hear- 
ing that  Quebec  had  fallen,  prudently  returned  to  France. 
We  have  seen  what  befell  de  Caen  in  charge  of  a  third  expedi- 
tion. The  Chevalier  de  Razilly  was  next  commissioned  to  carry 
succor  to  the  colony,  and  to  resist  the  English  occupation.  But 
he  never  sailed,  and  his  instructions  and  destination  were  changed. 

So  David  Kirke  remained  in  unopposed  occupation  of  his  post 
Until  that  July  day  in  1632,  when  de  Caen,  without  waste  of 
gunpowder  or  any  undue  parade,  resumed  possession  of  the 
place.  The  Cardinal  had  allowed  the  old  company  the  privilege 
of  trading  one  year  longer  on  the  St.  Lawrence — a  prudent  meas- 
ure, as  it  gave  them  time  to  collect  what  property  they  had ;  but 
above  all  to  remove  any  Huguenots  without  the  infliction  of  un- 
necessarv  harshness,  and  to  collect  data  for  their  claim  against  the 
British  Government  under  the  treaty  of  St.  Germain.  Whether 
all  the  provisions  of  that  treaty  were  ever  carried  out  is 
more  than  doubtful,  for  treaty  obligations  to  pay  money  have 
too  often  rested  lightly  on  State  officials.  By  the  treaty, 
Quebec,  as  well  as  all  British  conquests  in  Acadia  and  Cape  Bre- 


222  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

ton,  were  to  be  restored  within  eight  days  after  the  commandants 
of  the  posts  were  notified  of  the  treaty ;  but  three  weeks  longer 
were  allowed  for  the  English  garrison  and  inhabitants  to  evacu- 
ate the  country  with  their  arms  and  personal  possessions.  For 
the  transportation  of  the  garrison  and  traders,  de  Caen  was  bound 
to  charter  and  equip  a  ship  of  from  two  hundred  to  two  hundred 
and  fifty  tons ;  and,  for  goods  belonging  to  British  subjects,  if  left 
in  Quebec,  their  cost  in  England,  with  thirty  per  cent  to  cover 
risks,  is  to  be  paid.  Quebec  is  to  be  restored,  and  its  buildings, 
munitions  of  war  and  stores,  are  to  be  returned  in  kind  or  in 
value,  as  they  were  when  captured,  except  those  stores  taken 
away  by  the  English  in  1629,  negotiations  about  which  had 
already  lasted  two  whole  years,  and  for  which  Great  Britain 
now  promised  to  pay  de  Caen  82,700  livres  Tournois.  Great 
Britain  also  undertook  to  return  to  de  Caen  the  bark  "St.  He- 
lene"  and  its  cargo ;  and  certain  other  prizes  were  to  be  restored 
to  their  owners ;  but  there  are  to  be  deducted  certain  expenses 
for  care  and  maintenance  and  port  dues,  and  1,200  livres  which 
de  Caen  is  adjudged  to  owe  the  Kirkes  for  the  transportation  of 
the  French  to  France  in  1629.  With  such  a  complicated  open 
account  to  be  settled,  it  is  easy  to  understand  why  Richelieu  ac- 
corded the  old  Huguenot  company  another  year  of  trade  mon- 
opoly, for  that  was  a  period  all  too  short  witliin  which  to  take 
inventory  of  stock  and  losses,  and  file  claims  against  a  foreign 
government,  to  say  nothing  of  withdrawing  the  heretic  traders 
from  the  country. 

Father  Le  Jeune,  in  his  Relation  of  1632,  describes  as  extreme 
the  desolation  of  the  post  when  Emery  de  Caen  and  de  Plessis 
Bouchard  entered  into  possession  on  the  13th  of  July,  1632.  The 
habitation  was  a  heap  of  ashes — reduced,  intentionally  he  implies, 
to  that  condition  by  Thomas  Kirke — though,  if  the  story  of  the 
damage  done  by  lightning  be  true,  natural  causes  sufifice  to  ac- 
count for  it.  It  is  not  clear  why  Kirke  should  have  intentionally 
destroyed  what  he  expected  would  remain  his  property. 

In  the  Jesuit  House  all  the  furniture  that  remained  was  two 
tables.  The  doors  were  off  their  hinges.  The  windows  were 
broken,  and  the  garden  overgrown  with  peas.    The  Recollet  mon- 


AN    INTERESTING   RELIGIOL'S    SERVICE.  223 

astery  was  still  more  deplorably  desolate.  Both  were  far  removed 
from  the  fort,  and,  if  unoccupied,  they  may  well  have  advanced 
towards  utter  ruin  under  the  ravages  of  the  weather  and  the  In- 
dians, without  any  aid  from  Kirke  and  his  Protestant  minister. 

The  Recollets,  not  being  permitted  to  return,  had  authorized 
the  Jesuits  to  unearth  the  church  plate,  and  to  use  it.  The  widow 
of  Louis  Hebert  and  her  son-in-law,  Guillaume  Couillard, 
continued  to  cultivate  the  portion  of  land  deeded  to  Hebert 
in  1626,  whicli  occupied  probably  the  site  of  the  present  Semi- 
nary Garden.  At  her  house  the  priests  gathered  together  the  little 
company  of  the  faithful.  It  was  not  as  Father  Le  Jeinu'  called 
it  "la  plus  ancicnne  de  ce  pays-ci,"  if  the  chapel  were  still  standing- 
near  the  habitation  which  Father  Dolbeau  built  in  the  Lower 
Town  in  1615.  The  family  of  Aliraham  IMartin,  the  Scotcli  pilot, 
was  probably  of  the  number  of  those  who  attended  this  first  mass. 
He  was  an  industrious  man,  and,  when  not  on  the  water,  cultivat- 
ed a  farm  forming  proljalily  part  of  the  Iiattlefield  which  was  to  be 
drenched  with  blood  in  the  middle  of  the  next  century.  Abraham 
Martin  held  twelve  acres  as  a  concession  made  by  the  company 
in  1635,  'i"<^l  ^1^  1648  Adrian  Duchesne  transferred  to  him  tliirty- 
two  adjacent  acres,  all  of  which  his  heirs  sold  in  1667  to  the  Ur- 
suline  nuns,  in  whose  possession  it  remained  till  recently,  when  a 
portion,  admitted  to  be  part  of  the  field  of  the  Battle  of  the 
Plains,  was  bought  by  tlie  Dominion  Government.  The  family  of 
Nicolas  Pivert  and  Pierre  Dcsportes,  who  was  in  charge  of  the  Cap 
Tourmente  establishment  when  it  was  destroyed  by  Kirke's  men  in 
1628,  remained  in  Canada,  though  they  probabl}-  did  not  overtly 
•transfer  their  allegiance  to  England,  and  fight  on  her  side,  as  did 
Marsolet  and  Brule.*  Whether  all  these  were  Catholics  may  well 
be  doubted ;  but  religion  has  everywhere  and  at  all  times  sat  light- 
ly on  the  consciences  of  backwoodsmen  and  hunters.  Catholicism 
was  to  be  the  password,  under  the  new  regime,  for  admission  into 
New  France,  and  few  of  the  rank  and  file  of  de  Caen's  Huguenot 
followers,  if  they  had  become  enamoured  of  the  wild  life  of  the 

*  Poor  Brule  did  not  long  survive  the  surrender.  He  was  l<illcd  l)v  .a 
Montagnais  Indian  in  the  following  spring.  The  priests  looked  O'l  liis  murder 
as  an  instance  of  divine  retribution  against  a  traitor;  Champlain  looked  on  it  as  a 
crime. 


224  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

wilderness,  would  hesitate  to  use  it.  Even  Emery  de  Caen,  smart- 
ing under  the  forfeiture  of  his  concession,  permitted  the  Jesuit 
Eathers  to  say  mass  on  Sunday  in  one  of  the  rooms  of  the  Cha- 
teau, pending  the  erection  of  a  church.  Within  a  month  supplies, 
in  men  and  provisions,  sufficient  for  all  immediate  requirements, 
arrived  under  the  Sieur  de  la  Ralde  and  Captain  ]\Iorieult.  Among 
the  immigrants  were  two  notable  men,  Noel  Juchereau  and  Guil- 
laume  Guillemot — sent  out  probably  to  safeguard  the  interests 
of  the  new  company,  for  the  de  Caens  may  have  been  suspected 
of  taking  unfair  advantage  of  their  temporary  concession,  espe- 
cially as  the  internal  affairs  of  Erance  were  so  disturbed.  Specu- 
lation was  evidently  rife  on  that  subject  in  Quebec.  According  to 
Father  Le  Jeune,  it  divided  the  little  settlement  during  the  long 
winter  months  into  two  factions,  one  party  arguing  in  favor  of 
the  old  company  and  the  other  in  favor  of  the  new.  Had  they 
known  that  the  great  Cardinal  had  carried  his  point,  and  that  the 
head  of  Montmorency  had  fallen,  none  would  have  been  surprised 
when  Champlain  appeared  in  the  spring  of  1633  as  the  Governor 
of  New  Erance,  to  assert  and  to  enforce  the  claims  of  the  new 
company. 

The  interregnum  between  the  dissolution  of  the  old  company 
and  the  active  rule  of  the  new,  including  the  three  years  of  the 
English  occupation,  was  therefore  five  years.  With  the  arrival 
of  Champlain  in  the  spring  of  1633  commenced  the  history  of 
Quebec  as  a  town,  as  distinct  from  a  trading  port,  and  the  experi- 
ment of  governing  a  colony  by  a  chartered  trading  company  under 
royal  auspices,  instead  of  by  a  partnership  of  merchants.  The  ill- 
success  of  the  previous  attempt  to  shift  the  responsibility  and  bur- 
dens of  State  from  the  shoulders  of  Erench  ministers  to  those  of 
private  adventurers,  with  interests  diametrically  opposed  to 
those  of  the  colonists  they  pledged  themselves  to  introduce,  was 
explained  away  by  saying  that  de  Caen  and  his  predecessors,  de 
Monts  and  others,  were  heretics,  who,  through  renouncing  the 
faith  of  their  fathers,  had  lost  all  sense  of  truth  and  honor. 
The  new  company,  composed  of  one  hundred  good  men  and 
true,  actuated  by  zeal  for  the  glory  of  Erance  and  the  con- 
version   of    the    heathen,    would,    it    was    assumed,    be    willing 


FINANCIAL  DIFFICULTIES  OF  THE  NEW   COMPANY.  22$ 

i!^  put  aside  their  selfish  interests  in  favor  of  the  public 
good,  and  thus  build  up  an  empire  in  the  New  World 
which,  costing  France  nothing,  would  yet  redound  enormous- 
ly to  her  profit  and  renown.  As  we  shall  see,  it  required 
only  a  few  years  to  dispel  the  illusion,  and  prove  that  human  greed 
and  selfishness  are  not  extinguished  by  the  acceptance  of  any  the- 
ological shibboleth ;  and  that  even  sincere  and  earnest  endeavor  to 
propagate  the  faith  may  co-exist  with  vicious  rules  incapable  of 
being  reconciled  with  the  dictates  of  patriotism.  Moreover,  the 
company's  career  made  it  evident  that  commercial  projects  op- 
posed to  the  public  interest,  and  therefore  provoking  opposition, 
cannot  possibly  prosper. 

The  Company  was  already  in  difficulties  before  it  com- 
menced its  commercial  operations  in  1633,  for  the  statement 
of  its  accounts  made  to  the  French  Government  in  1671 
shows  that  it  was  virtually  bankrupt  from  the  first.  It  claimed 
that,  immediately  on  its  establishment,  it  equipped  seven  ves- 
sels at  a  cost  of  164,720  livres,  9  sols,  7  deniers,  which  were  cap- 
tured in  the  St.  Lawrence.  A  second  fleet,  equipped  in  1629  at  a 
cost  of  103,966  livres,  shared  the  same  fate.  The  two  expedi- 
tions absorbed  almost  all  the  capital  of  the  company,  which  was 
300,000  livres.  Nevertheless,  in  1630,  a  third  expedition  was 
despatched  at  a  cost  of  40,000  livres,  which  ended  as  disastrously 
as  the  preceding  ones.  These  failures  exhausted  not  only  the 
company's  capital,  but  its  courage.  Nevertheless,  a  subsidiary 
company  was  organized  in  November,  1632,  which  undertook  to 
furnish  the  parent  company  with  a  loan  of  1 10,000  livres  for  five 
years,  in  consideration  of  receiving  one-third  of  the  profits.  The 
operations  of  the  auxiliary  company  were  successful,  and  enabled 
the  parent  company  to  make  60,000  livres  of  profit,  although 
Marie  and  Solomon  Langlois  obtained  a  judgment  against  the 
company  for  45,000  livres,  to  cover  damages  to  their  ship;  and 
William  de  Caen  made  a  claim  against  the  company  for  70.900 
livres,  which,  to  avoid  a  seizure,  they  compromised  by  a  pay- 
ment, extending  over  six  years,  of  30,000  livres  and  in- 
terest. The  term  of  the  auxiliary  company's  partnership 
expiring    in    1637,    a    renewal    was    arranged    for    a    further 


226  QUEBEC  IX  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

period  of  four  years.  But  the  losses  of  the  second  partner- 
ship exceeded  the  gain  of  the  first,  for  in  1642  the  parent  com- 
pany owed  the  auxihary  company  70,464  hvres,  8  sols.  As  the  " 
auxiliary  company  refused  to  renew  their  partnership,  the  orig- 
inal company  was  obliged  to  make  an  assessment  of  1,500  livres 
on  each  of  the  69  shareholders,  to  which  number  the  original  100 
had  shrunk.  The  company's  affairs  still  continuing  unprofitable, 
it  went  into  voluntary  liquidation  by  act  of  the  Council  on  July 
24,  1643,  owing  410.796  livres.  But  a  partial  liquidation  of  their 
debts  was  efifected  by  charging  the  auxiliary  company  with  the 
60,000  livres,  the  share  accruing  to  the  original  company  of  the 
profits  of  the  first  partnersliip.  The  assessment,  though  insuffi- 
cient to  liquidate  the  dcttcs  passives,  enabled  the  company  to  con- 
tinue its  operations  and  to  make  a  profit  of  85,000  livres  during 
the  four  following  years. 

In  1645,  by  royal  consent,  the  company  resigned  its  exclu- 
sive privileges,  and  permitted  the  people  of  Canada  to  engage  in 
the  fur  trade,  reserving  1,000  pounds  weight  of  beaver  skins  as 
annual  rental,  besides  the  right  to  create  seignories  and  the  own- 
ership of  the  land.  But  the  company  received  the  royalty  for 
five  years  only.  If  it  w^as  paid  for  any  longer  period  by  the  in- 
habitants, the  money  was  retained  in  the  colony — not  remitted  to 
the  company.  Under  these  circumstances,  the  company  in  1671 
consented  to  transfer  to  the  King  (Louis  XT\'.)  all  rights  and 
privileges,  on  his  engagement  to  reimburse  it  for  all  its  losses. 
They  rendei  ed  an  account  as  follows  : 

L.  s.     d. 

Cost  of  first  expedition  in  1628 164.720       9       o 

Cost  of  second  expedition  in   1629 103,976     19 

Cost  of  third  expedition  in  1630 77,092  I 

1632 — Assessment  to  pay  the  Langlois 45,000  I 

Liquidation  of  dettes  passives  in   1643 410,796     t6     10 

Assessment  in  1642 103,500 

905,084     44     TO  I 

Interest   to  January.    1671 2,661,102  "I 

'  I 

Losses,  assessments  and  interest 3,566,186     44     10 


AN    UNFAVORABLE    BALANCE    SHEET.  22/ 

On  the  credit  side  of  the  account  there  stood : 

Profits  in  1630 7,301  livres 

Profits  of  the  auxihary  company 60,000 

Profits   after     1643 85,000 

Royalty  in  beaver  skins  after   1645 50,000 


Total 202,301   livres 

The  company  came  out  the    loser    by    over    3,000,000    livres 
Tournois. 


CHAPTER  X. 

The  Passing  of  Champlain  and  the  Arrival  of  the  First 
Seigneurs  in  Quebec. 

Althoug-h  the  affairs  of  the  company  were,  as  we  have  seen 
already,  in  such  disorder  that  the  funds  for  carrying  on  its  opera- 
tions had  to  be  borrowed  from  an  auxihary  organization,  com- 
posed of  Normandy  merchants,  of  whom  Sieurs  Rosie  and  Chef- 
fauh  were  the  guiding  spirits,  all  gloomy  forebodings  in  the 
colony  itself  were  dispelled  on  that  bright  morning  in  May,  1633, 
when  Champlain  with  a  fleet  of  three  vessels  hove  in  sight. 
He  came  in  a  modest  state,  yet  as  beseemed  a  lieutenant  of  the 
great  Cardinal,  to  govern  half  a  continent.  The  "St.  Pierre," 
of  150  tons  and  12  guns;  the  "St.  Jean,"  of  160  tons  and  10 
guns,  and  the  "Don  de  Dieu,"  of  80  tons  and  6  guns,  saluted 
the  fort,  and  the  fort  replied  with  its  feeble  battery.  Then 
the  Governor  landed  and  was  escorted  by  arquebusiers  and 
pikemen  up  the  steep,  narrow  road  which  has  always  been 
called  Mountain  Hill,  to  the  "Fort."  It  was  almost  five  years 
since  he  had  sadly  descended  it,  a  prisoner  of  war.  Now 
he  returned,  inspired  by  the  magnificent  views  of  his  great 
master,  and  cheered  by  his  own  enthusiastic  belief  in  the  future 
of  the  illimitable  domain  of  which  he  was  the  ruler.  Neither  the 
great  Cardinal's  prophetic  spirit  nor  the  lieutenant's  wildest 
dreams  could  possibly  have  grasped  the  magnitude  of  the  ter- 
ritory which   France  was  to  explore  and  to  claim  as  her  own. 

The  chief  event  of  importance  during  the  summer  was  the  ar- 
rival of  a  fleet  of  140  Huron  canoes  carrying  a  force  of  600 
Indians.  They  made  their  camp  on  the  ist  of  August.  The  follow- 
ing day  was  devoted  to  a  council  and  the  interchange  of  presents. 
On  the  3rd  and  4th  of  the  month  the  important  business  of  selling 
and  buying  was  transacted.  The  5th  was  given  over  to  feasting 
and  dancing,  and  on  the  6th  they  paddled  away.     Before  their  ap- 


THE    HURONS   AT   QUEBEC.  229 

pearance  a  large  party  of  Algonquins  had  been  induced  to  foregG 
their  intention  of  proceeding  to  Tadousac  to  trade  with  two  Eng- 
lish ships  which  lay  there.  The  Hurons  also  were  persuaded  to  dis- 
pose of  their  peltries  at  Quebec,  rather  than  to  an  English  vessel 
which  seems  to  have  pushed  up  the  river  to  that  point.  With 
both  Algonquins  and  Hurons  there  was  endless  palaver  with  inter- 
change of  presents,  promises  and  prophecies.  The  latter  went  so 
far  as  to  anticipate  the  day  when  the  French,  having  built  posts  in 
the  West,  would  intermarry  with  the  Indians  and  the  two  peoples 
become  one.  Champlain,  who  shared  in  that  hope,  could  hardly  be 
expected  to  foresee  that,  whenever  that  should  take  place,  the 
white  man  would  sink  to  the  level  of  the  red  man  instead  of  raising 
the  red  man  to  his  own.  The  Indians  excused  the  existing  trade 
with  the  English  as  being  a  mere  measure  of  prudence,  explain- 
ing that  if  they  shut  off  their  furs  entirely  from  the  English  mer- 
chants, the  latter  would  simply  encourage  the  Iroquois  to  enter 
their  domain,  and  would  thus  bring,  not  merely  competition,  riut 
war  upon  themselves  and  the  French.  The  Indian  was  in  fact  more 
astute  and  long-headed  than  his  French  ally.  There  was  scope 
enough  on  the  continent  for  the  expenditure  of  the  energies  and 
resources  of  both  English  and  French  acting  in  friendly  rivalry, 
had  they  been  able  to  see  it.     Unfortunately  they  could  not. 

Father  Le  Jeune,  the  superior  of  the  Mission,  had  commission- 
ed Fathers  Brebeuf,  Daniel  and  Davost  to  return  with  the  Hurons; 
but  the  Indians  declined  to  be  responsible  for  their  safety,  alleging 
that  the  Montagnais  would  attack  them,  in  revenge  for  the  deten- 
tion of  their  tribesman.  The  result  would  be  war,  and  serious 
consequences  to  future  trade  would  follow,  as  with  hostile  Mon- 
tagnais to  the  north,  and  savage  Iroquois  to  the  south,  of  the 
great  waterway,  all  access  to  the  trading  posts  would  be  shut  oflf. 
The  intrepid  Jesuits  would  willingly  have  risked  their  lives,  but 
the  Governor,  mindful  of  the  interests  of  the  colony  and  sensible 
of  his  weakness  from  a  military  point  of  view,  forbade  them,  and 
on  the  6th  of  August  they  regretfully  saw  the  fleet  of  canoes  dis- 
appear like  a  flock  of  birds.  Another  year  had  to  elapse  before 
they  entered  on  that  heroic  campaign  which  won  for  the  Companv 
of  Jesus  such  undying  glory.     That  year  they  spent  in  studying 


230  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

the  habits  of  the  Indian  tribes ;  in  converting  to  Christianity  a  few 
— a  very  few — Montagnais ;  in  fulfilHng  with  faithful  punctuality 
their  clerical  functions ;  and  in  baptizing  the  first  negro  who  came 
to  Quebec.  He  was  a  lad  brought  by  some  traders  from  Mada- 
gascar and  given  to  Kirke,  who  left  him  to  the  care  of  the  Jesuits. 

The  events  of  the  summer  made  it  clear  to  Champlain  that 
there  was  danger  to  the  company's  interests  in  bringing  the  In- 
dians of  the  Great  Lakes  so  far  east  with  their  furs,  and  he  there- 
fore took  steps  towards  establishing  new  posts  and  re-establish- 
ing old  ones  further  up  the  river.  The  first  he  founded  proved 
to  be  of  little  importance ;  it  was  situated  on  the  Island  of  St. 
Croix,  near  the  Richelieu  Rapids,  fifty  miles  above  Quebec,  where 
the  river  contracts  and  the  current  at  times  becomes  dangerous. 
It  was  soon  found  necessary  to  place  the  mart  of  traffic  still  fur- 
ther west,  and  the  company  therefore  ceded  to  the  Society  of 
Jesus  six  hundred  acres  at  Three  Rivers  on  condition  of  their 
erecting  thereon  a  suitable  building.  Three  Rivers  was  thus  re- 
stored to  its  former  importance,  but  only  for  a  short  period :  Mon- 
treal was  founded  in  1641,  and  within  twenty  years  had  monopo- 
lized the  trade  of  the  West. 

Champlain,  having  seen  his  guests  paddle  away  lighter  than 
they  came,  and  the  company's  warehouse  filled  with  the  cargoes 
of  one  hundred  and  forty  canoes,  a  plentiful  freight  for  his  return- 
ing fleet,  which  this  year  sailed  for  France  on  August  16,  earlier 
than  usual,  turned  his  energies  to  the  fulfillment  of  a  vow 
made  during  his  banishment,  that  if  he  were  allowed  by 
Providence  to  revisit  Quebec,  restored  to  French  rule,  he  would 
build  a  chapel  to  Notre  Dame  de  la  Recouvrance  (Our  Lady  of 
the  Restoration). 

The  chapel  in  question  is  supposed  by  Abbe  Ferland  to  have 
been  erected  where  the  English  cathedral  now  stands ;  but  Laver- 
diere  is  probably  correct  in  assigning  to  it  some  remains  found  by 
him  to  the  east  of  the  present  French  cathedral.  It  was  the  second 
church  built  in  Quebec,  the  first  having  been  the  little  wooden 
chapel  erected  by  theRecollets  in  the  Lower  Town,  which  was  prob- 
ably burned  during  the  English  occupation,  together  with  the  store 
and  the  habitation,  which  adjoined  it.     The  chapel  of  Notre  Dame 


NOTRE   DAME    DE    LA    RECOUVRANCE.  23 1 

de  la  Recouvrance  was  therefore  the  one  place  of  worship  in  Que- 
bec till  it  was  burned  in  1640 ;  for  the  chapel  attached  to  the  Jesuit 
college  was  not  commenced  until  1650;  nor  used  for  divine  service 
till  the  first  Sunday  of  Advent,  1653.  The  comiuunity  was  in  a 
temper  of  mind  to  be  impressed  keenly  by  religious  in- 
fluences. Father  le  Jeune  (Relation  of  1634,  page  2)  de- 
scribes the  effect  which  the  services  of  the  church,  per- 
formed in  this  humble  chapel,  had  uj^on  the  comnumity. 
Greater  austerity  cannot  have  pervaded  a  Puritan  town  in  Massa- 
chusetts. Champlain  set  the  example  at  the  castle.  He  forbade 
all  idle  talk  at  meals,  and  prevented  it  by  having  a  book  of  secular 
history  read  at  breakfast,  and  at  supper  the  lives  of  the  Saints. 
In  the  morning,  at  midday,  and  at  evening  the  bell  sum- 
moned the  household  to  prayers.  If  Champlain  had  coquetted 
with  heresy  and  heretics  in  his  younger  days,  he  was  now  making 
ample  amends.  A  veritable  revival,  indeed,  seems  to  have  taken 
place  among  the  least  impressionable  class  of  the  community.  One 
sinner,  who  had  committed  some  offence  in  Carnival  week,  walked 
barefoot  in  the  snow  half  a  league  to  the  Jesuit  chapel  to  confess 
and  obtain  absolution,  and  during  Lent  the  soldiers  and  artisans, 
usually  so  lax,  who  composed  the  major  part  of  the  population, 
not  only  Submitted  willingly  to  the  prescribed  fasts,  but  subjected 
themselves  to  discipline  thirtyfold  more  severe  than  was  imposed. 
So  delighted  was  the  good  father  tliat.  breaking  into  poetry,  he 
declared  that  "the  winter,  cold  as  it  was  in  New  France,  was 
never  so  severe  as  to  blight  the  blossoms  of  Paradise,  which  there 
bloomed  the  year  around." 

If  we  may  trust  the  Relation,  the  good  work  prospered  also 
among  the  Indians.  Yet  one  is  rather  taken  aback  by  the  bellicose 
advice  which  the  superior  gives,  when  he  recommends,  as  the 
most  effective  method  of  spreading  the  Gospel  among  the  Hurons, 
making  war  on  their  enemies,  the  Iroquois.  The  experiment 
was  followed.  It  certainly  resulted  in  the  conversion  of  the 
Hurons,  but  only  after  nearly  the  whole  nation  had  been  exter- 
minated in  the  process.  Another  piece  of  advice  was  more  in 
harmony  with  his  religious  profession,  namely  to  try  and  wean 
the  Indians  from  their  roving  habits.     The  experience  of  nearly 


232  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

three  centuries  proves  that,  as  long  as  wild  game  exists,  the  hunt- 
ing instinct  in  the  savage  cannot  be  repressed.  Even  half-breeds 
like  the  Hurons  of  Lorette  take  grudgingly  to  agriculture,  but  en- 
gage with  all  the  ardor  of  their  ancestors  in  the  hunt.  In  the 
West  the  Indian  of  the  plains  resisted  the  blandishments  of 
civilization  till  the  bufifalo  had  been  killed  off,  and  the  stimulus 
and  excitement  of  the  chase  were  denied  him.  It  is  discouraging 
after  reading  the  enthusiastic  description  of  the  work  of  the  Jes- 
uit Fathers  among  the  Montagnais,  to  visit  the  camp  of  their  de- 
scendants to-day.  Two  centuries  and  a  half  have  wrought  num- 
berless changes  all  around  them,  but  left  them  stationary  and 
savage  still. 

The  spring  fleet  brought  out  two  more  Jesuit  priests,  Fathers 
Lalemant  and  Buteux,  and  Brother  Jean  Liegeois.  There  were 
thus  in  the  colony  eight  priests  and  two  brothers,  forming  perhaps 
even  a  larger  proportion  of  the  total  population  than  before  the 
English  occupation.  They  soon  began  to  scatter :  Fathers  Bre- 
beuf  and  Daniel  ascended  to  Three  Rivers  to  await  there  the  arri- 
val of  the  Indians,  and  found  a  house  built  on  the  territory  which 
the  company  liad  ceded  to  them,  at  the  mouth  of  the  St.  Maurice 
River.  The  Hurons  came  down,  but  only  in  small  bands.  War 
had  broken  out  with  the  Iroquois,  and  the  Hurons  had  met  with 
serious  reverses,  losing  200  dead  and  100  prisoners,  according  to 
their  reckoning ;  numbers  which  may  safely  be  divided  by  ten. 
Not  even  the  strong  motives  of  trade  could  induce  them  to  ap- 
proach the  country  of  their  terrible  enemies.  When  it  was  pro- 
posed that  they  should  carry  back  two  priests  and  some  French 
laymen,  they  hesitated  long,  wavering  between  their  desire  to 
propitiate  the  French  and  their  fear  of  offending  their  Algonquin 
allies,  whose  country  they  must  traverse,  and  who  were  bitterly 
opposed  to  the  passage  of  the  white  men.  At  length,  under  the 
persuasion  of  Duplessis  and  de  TEspinez,  and  after  stipulating 
that  the  company  should  buy  their  stock  of  tobacco,  and  that 
the  priests  should  do  their  full  share  of  paddling,  they  con- 
sented to  take  two  ecclesiastics  and  one  French  layman.  Fath- 
ers Brebeuf  and  Daniel  were  the  missionaries  chosen.  Subse- 
quently Father  Davost  and  five  more  laymen  were  given  passage 


THE  FIRST  CANADIAN  SEIGNEUR.  233 

by  other  bands  of  Huroiis.  Thus  began  that  memorable  mission 
of  the  Jesuits  to  the  Hurons  which  won  for  five  of  its  members, 
Jogues,  Daniel,  Lalemant,  Brebeuf  and  Ciarnicr  crowns  of  mar- 
tyrdom, and  which  exhibited  in  heroic  action  the  self-denial  and 
courage  which  the  system  of  Ignatius  J.oyola  can  inspire  in  its 
adherents,  and  which  compel  our  admiration  when  the  service 
performed  is  untainted  by  political  or  worldly  considerations. 
But  alas!  the  close  alliance  thus  established  witli  the  French,  not 
being  backed  by  adequate  physical  force,  proved  the  ruin  of  the 
Hurons  and  the  forerunner  of  numberless  ills  to  the  un- 
fortunate colony.  Henceforth  the  Hurons  were  to  know  no 
peace  or  rest  till  the  small  remnant  of  the  nation,  after  being 
chased  from  Lake  Huron  to  the  Island  of  Orleans,  and  then 
from  refuge  to  refuge,  found  shelter  in  1693  in  the  picturesque 
village  of  Lorette,  near  Quebec.  Little  could  the  Huron  hunters, 
when  they  wavered  between  the  entreaties  of  the  French  on  the 
one  hand  and  the  warnings  of  their  Indian  allies  on  the  other,  have 
foreseen  through  the  long  vista  of  anxious  years  the  disasters  to 
their  tribe  which  were  to  follow  in  rapid  succession  their  self-sacri- 
ficing act. 

Father  le  Jeune,  as  in  duty  bound,  devotes  the  long  memoirs  of 
1634  to  the  doings  of  himself  and  his  order  in  their  role  as  Indian 
missionaries.  A  minute  and  interesting  account  of  his  wondrous 
journey  with  a  band  of  Montagnais ;  a  description  of  the  manners 
and  customs  of  these  Indians ;  and  the  story  of  the  departure  of 
the  missionaries  and  their  arduous  journey  to  the  Great  Lakes 
compose  his  principal  topics.  We  could  have  wished  that  he  had 
given  us  a  little  more  secular  history.  One  paragraph  which  he 
does  devote  to  mundane  matters  imparts  a  piece  of  news  of  prime 
importance.  It  tells  us  of  the  arrival  of  Mons.  GiiTard,  who  was 
to  be  the  first  landowner  to  do  homage  as  a  seigneur  in  New 
France. 

The  priests  and  seigneurs  were  henceforth  to  be  the  two  social 
forces  of  the  colony,  which  means  that  the  people  were  to  be  dis- 
couraged from  thinking  for  themselves  or  from  taking  that  in- 
terest in  public  affairs  which  individual  ownership  of  land 
engenders.  The  feudal  principle  expressed  by  the  aphorism  "Nulla 


234  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

terre  sans  Seigneur,"  was  to  be  carried  out  to  the  full  in  Canada. 
In  the  old  land,  absolute  monarchy  had  in  its  struggle  with  the 
great  feudal  lords  come  off  conqueror,  though  the  land  tenure 
remained  feudal  in  France  up  to  the  time  of  the  Revolution.  Still 
to  Cardinal  Richelieu,  as  to  the  French  people  at  large,  feudalism 
was  more  congenial  than  democracy ;  and  its  appearance  in  a  mod- 
ified form  in  New  France  cannot,  therefore,  be  a  matter  of  sur- 
prise. As  a  system  it  asserted  the  right  of  the  King  to  the 
fealty  of  his  subjects,  and  his  control  over  the  land  was 
thereby  explicitly  recognized.  Thus  class  distinctions  and  a 
modest  semblance  of  aristocracy  were  preserved ;  the  seig- 
neurs, forming  a  semi-aristocratic  class,  would  support  and 
not  oppose  the  Church,  and  through  their  influence  the  Cardinal's 
desire  to  impose  imity  of  doctrine  and  strict  submission  to  ec- 
clesiastical domination  would  be  furthered.  By  these  measures  an 
impressive  antiquity  was  stamped  on  New  France,  and  Quebec, 
as  the  seat  of  government,  became  an  epitome  of  the  middle  ages, 
Avhere  the  Governor,  as  representative  of  the  King,  the  Seigneur 
Dominant,  held  his  court,  and  received  the  homage  of  his  seign- 
eurs in  person  or  by  deputy,  and  where  the  priests  ruled  over  the 
conduct  and  consciences  of  men,  as  arbitrarily  as  though  Luther 
and  Calvin  had  never  resisted  the  authority  of  the  Church  in 
Europe.  For  more  than  another  century  the  Governor  of  Canada 
remained  an  anomaly  on  the  American  continent,  and  Quebec  an 
anachronism;  as  picturesque  in  its  religious,  social  and  official  life 
as  in  its  natural  situation.  Even  now  so  tenaciously  and  tenderly 
does  Quebec  cling  to  its  associations  with  the  past  that  its  civil 
law  is  founded  on  the  Contitine  de  Paris,  a  feudal  system  replaced 
by  the  Code  Napoleon  in  old  France,  and  abolished  everywhere 
except  in  the  old  French  province  of  Lower  Canada. 

The  grant  of  all  the  land  in  New  France  to  the  company  of  One 
Hundred  Associates  was  conditional,  and  the  conditions  neces- 
sarily differed  from  those  attached  to  feudal  grants  in  France. 
The  real  and  avowed  purpose  in  Canada  was  to  encourage  emi- 
gration ;  consequently  the  alienation  of  land  under  conditions  most 
likely  to  favor  that  object  was  obligatory  on  the  company.  It  was 
deemed  that  this  object  would  be  best  attained,  and  in  a  manner 


A   FEUDAL    LAND   TKNURE.  235 

that  would  harmonize  with  the  national  hahits  and  instincts,  by 
giving  the  land  to  the  company  of  New  h'rance  "forever  in  full 
property,  justice  and  lordship,"  but  on  condition  that  the  com- 
pany "distribute  the  same  to  those  who  should  inhabit  the  said 
country,  and  to  others."  Grants  were,  therefore,  given  of  small 
tracts  to  actual  settlers,  like  Hebert,  (ni  fief  noble,  and  of  large 
ones  to  seig}ieitrs,  who  were  under  obligation  to  cede  the  land 
to  actual  settlers  in  sub  fief,  or  on  a  rent  charge  ;  and,  to  induce  the 
settlers  to  take  up  land,  the  seigneurs  had  to  provide  them 
with  carding  and  flour  mills,  where  their  produce  could 
be  rendered  available  for  use.  The  company  was  the  vassal  of 
the  King,  and  the  ceiisitaires,  or  tenants,  were  vassals  of  the  com- 
pany or  of  their  grantees,  the  seigneurs.  The  King  reserves  from 
the  company  the  right  of  fealty  and  homage,  and  the  appoint- 
ment of  officers  of  Royal  Courts,  who  should  be  named  and  pre- 
sented to  him  by  the  said  associates  when  it  should  be  deemed 
proper  to  establish  such  courts. 

Under  such  legal  conditions  the  Sieur  Giffard  became  the  first 
seigneur  of  Canada,  fie  had  been  repeatedly  to  Canada  as  medi- 
cal officer  on  one  of  de  Caen's  ships,  and  had  enjoyed  liimself 
while  at  Quebec  in  shooting  snipe  and  duck  in  la  Canardicre,  and 
had  built  himself  a  cabin  on  the  beach  where,  as  narrated, 
the  Indian  murdered  Dumoulin  and  Madame  Hebert's  serv- 
ant in  1627.  He  had  been  taken  prisoner,  when  returning  to 
France  in  1628,  in  the  ship  of  the  Sieur  de  Roquemont ;  but  he 
had  such  pleasant  recollections  of  his  experience  in  the  New 
World  that  he  induced  Madame  Marie  Renouard  to  marry  him 
in  1635  ^"<i  share  the  hardships  of  his  rough  Canadian,  home. 
Father  Le  Jeune  records  that  on  the  4th  of  June,  the  feast  of 
Pentecost,  Captain  de  Nesle  brought  his  ship  into  port  and  had  as 
passengers  Mons.  Gififard,  his  wliole  familv,  and  several  immi- 
grants whom  he  was  bringing  out  as  settlers.  His  wife  was  brave 
in  thus  following  her  husband,  for  she  was  shortly  to  ])e  confined 
of  a  daughter,  the  event  taking  place  on  Trinity  Sunday,  a  week 
after  landing. 

This  sturdy  couple  were  of  just  tlie  stuff  to  try  the  first  ex- 
periment of  the  seigneur's  life  in  New  France.     M.  Giffard  had 


236  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

selected  as  the  land  to  be  ceded  to  him  his  old  shooting  ground, 
namely  a  league  of  the  river  front  below  Quebecon the  north  shore, 
from  the  discharge  of  the  stream  then  known  as  Notre  Dame  de 
Beauport  (Brown's  Brook)  towards  the  Falls  of  Montmorenci,  by 
one  and  one-half  leagues  in  depth.  This  area  was  extended  in  1653 
to  four  leagues  in  depth.  As  in  the  case  of  all  seignorial  grants, 
this  was  no  absolute  gift  of  land.  The  King,  as  freeholder,  had 
conditionally  substituted  the  company  in  his  rights,  and  the  com- 
pany in  its  turn  substituted  the  seigneur  in  some  of  its  rights,  but 
neither  the  company  nor  the  seigneur  was  absolute  owner  of  the 
soil,  in  the  sense  in  which  private  persons  can  own  it  in 
Great  Britain  and  the  United  States.  Such  absolute  ownership 
by  individuals  was  abhorrent  to  the  ideas  of  feudalism.  Even  the 
feudal  lord  was  supposed  to  own  and  use  the  land  only  for  the 
benefit  of  his  feudatories. 

The  conditions  under  which  grants  were  made  to  the  Cana- 
dian seigneurs  differed.  In  some  few  cases  the  seigneur  possessed 
"Le  droit  de  Haute,  Aloyenne  et  Basse  Justice"  (All  powers  of 
life  and  death),  but,  even  when  these  extreme  feudal  rights  were 
granted,  they  were  never  exercised.  In  several  cases  the  grant 
from  the  king  or  the  company  was  made  on  condition  that  the 
land  granted  should  be  alienated  to  actual  settlers.  Therein  these 
grants  differed  from  feudal  grants  in  Old  France,  where  aliena- 
tion of  the  land  was  absolutely  forbidden.  Otherwise  the  forms 
and  conditions  of  feudalism  in  the  old  world  were  more  or  less 
exactly  transferred  to  Canada.  Generally  speaking,  the  vassal  of 
the  King  or  the  company,  the  seigneur,  was  required  to  do  hom- 
age at  the  castle  of  St.  Louis  on  each  mutation  of  possession,  as 
well  as  to  pay  the  Seigneur  Dominant  a  piece  of  gold  and  the 
whole  or  part  of  one  year's  rental.  The  seigneur's  vassal,  the 
tenant  or  censitaire,  was  bound  to  do  homage  to  the  seigneur  and 
to  pay  cens  et  rentes  as  rental,  consisting  of  one  or  two  sous  per 
acre  and  half  a  bushel  of  oats.  He  was  also  obliged  to  grind  his 
com  at  the  seigneur's  mills,  giving  in  payment  generally  one- 
fourteenth  of  the  yield.  The  rental  was  so  insignificant  that  it 
would  not  have  repaid  the  seigneur  the  trouble  and  cost  of  re- 
cruiting the  settlers,  and  of  organizing  and  superintending  the 


SEIGNEUR    AND    CENSITAIRE.  237 

government  of  the  seignory,  had  he  not  possessed  the  further  right 
of  levying  what  were  called  lods  ct  z'cntcs,  or  one-twelfth  the 
amount  of  every  sale  of  property  and  real  estate  made  by  a 
censitaire,  or  tenant.  When  property  passed  at  death  to  a  direct 
heir  no  such  tax  was  due.  The  lods  et  ventcs,  payable  by  the 
farmer  or  censitairc  to  the  seigneur  as  a  tax  on  every  transfer  of 
his  holding,  corresponded  to  the  quinze  or  tax,  which  the  seigneur 
was  bound  to  pay  to  the  Seigneur  Dominant  whenever  there  was 
a  change  of  sovereign.  The  lods  et  rentes  in  time  became  an  in- 
tolerable burden,  and  interfered  so  seriously  with  the  transfer  of 
property,  that,  by  the  edict  of  171 1,  the  seigneurs  were  obliged 
to  commute  for  an  equitable  sum,  when  a  ccnsitaire  desired  to  ac- 
qtiire  a  title  to  his  land  in  free  and  common  socage.  This  com- 
pulsory condition,  under  which  the  seigneur  owned  his  land,  made 
the  actual  a1)olition  of  the  seignorial  tenure  under  the  law  of  1854 
legal  and  equitable.  Conseiwative  as  was  France  under  the  old 
regime,  and  ignorant  as  its  rulers  often  were  of  the  real  require- 
ments of  Canada,  whether  as  a  proprietary  colony  at  the  outset,  or 
a  crown  colony  afterwards,  the  seignorial  customs  were  repeatedly 
altered  by  edict  in  order  to  meet  the  changing  conditions  of  the 
country.  They  were  never  so  modified,  however,  as  to  give  the  stib- 
ject  the  right  to  own  the  land  unconditionally  or  to  alienate  it  ab- 
solutely from  the  crown,  though  the  gradual  tendency  was  towards 
greater  liberty  of  tenure. 

In  the  old  concession  made  to  the  Sieur  de  la  Roche  he  was 
authorized  to  grant  lauds  in  the  form  of  Fiefs,  Seignories,  Chat- 
tellenies,  Earldoms,  Viscounties  and  Baronies.  Thirty  years 
elapsed  between  the  date  of  this  document  and  the  chartering  of 
the  company  of  Canada.  The  feudal  ideas  of  land  tenure  still 
formed  an  inseparable  part  of  the  social  structure  of  France,  but 
the  growth  of  monarchical  power  had  meanwhile  so  far  modified 
the  views  of  statesmen  with  regard  to  government,  that  no  such 
powers  were  conferred  on  the  Company  of  the  One  Hundred 
Associates  as  de  la  Roche  had  been  invested  with.  On  the  con- 
trary, the  feudal  system  was  stretched  almost  beyond  recognition, 
when  the  vassal  of  the  crown  was  not  merely  allowed,  but  com- 
pelled, to  cut  up  the  fiefs  into  small  holdings  for  the  purpose  of 


238  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

enconra.Gi'ing'  the  creation  of  a  senii-iiulependent  agricultural  class. 
The  Canadian  feudal  system  of  land  tcinn"e  was,  of  course,  repug- 
nant to  the  English  system  of  individual  ownership,  wdiich 
under  the  intluence  of  Protestantism,  was  becoming  the  dominant 
principle  in  the  land  policy  of  the  Teutonic  nations.  It  had,  how- 
ever, the  effect  of  creating  what  the  great  Cardinal  intended, 
namely,  a  distinctly  French  community  with  a  nice  gradation  of 
dignities  and  interests,  tending  to  bind  together  instead  of 
dissociating  the  various  elements  of  the  social  body.  It  did  in  fact 
perform  this  service  so  effectually  that  all  the  forces  of  disintegra- 
tion which  have  since  been  at  work  have  not  availed  to  disturb  the 
homogeneity  of  French  Canada,  or  obliterate  the  institutions  of 
Old  France  in  America.  The  Cardinal's  plans  failed,  however, 
of  their  immediate  and  principal  purpose — the  encouragement  of 
immigration;  even  to-day  the  Frenchman  is  no  more  desirous  of 
leaving  his  beautiful  home  in  Normandy  or  Provence,  to  take  up 
land  in  the  wilderness,  though  offered  gratuitously  under  the  Teu- 
tonic allodial  system,  than  he  was  two  centuries  and  a  half  ago  to 
accept  it,  under  the  feudal  tenure,  from  a  Canadian  seigiicvr.  The 
failure  of  the  seigneurs  or  the  company  to  settle  New  France  as 
rapidly  as  the  less  attractive  shores  of  New  England  or  Virginia 
were  being  peopled,  depended  upon  more  deeply  seated  causes 
than  the  respective  systems  of  land  tenure  in  New  England  and 
New  'France. 

Giffard  did  homage  for  his  seignory  on  the  last  day  of  Decem- 
ber, 1635,  before  Marc  Antoine  de  Bras  de  Fer,  Sieur  de  Clias- 
teaufort  (Lieutenant  Governor).  He  promised  to  follow  the 
laws  and  ordinances  concerning  which  he  should  be  enjoined  and 
notified,  and  to  render  fealty  and  homage  for  the  land  of 
Beauport,  holding  it  expressly  of  the  fort  and  castle  of  Quebec. 
Chamiilain  had  died  a  week  before,  or  else  he  would  have  rep- 
resented the  King  and  the  company  in  this  act  of  fealty,  which 
would  have  seemed  to  him  a  realization  of  his  dreams  of  the  ex- 
tension to  New  France  of  the  power  and  institutions  of  the  parent 
state. 

The  seigneur  of  Beauport  secured  a  building  site  in  town  and 
erected  his  citv  residence  near  the  castle.     Thus  was  inaucfurated 


GOOD  OLD  DAYS  IN  CANADA.  239 

the  social  life  of  Quebec,  which  during  the  French  regime  was  a 
faint  reflection  of  the  bright  side  of  French  society,  for  in  the 
town  residence  of  many  a  seigneur  who  brought  his  family  to 
the  capital  for  the  winter  months,  the  gayety  of  a  French  salon 
was  repeated.  Until  the  approach  of  political  decay,  more  than  a 
centurv  later,  the  influence  of  the  clergy  was  sufficiently  strong  to 
repress  any  approach  to  the  license  which  was  an  unfortunate 
feature  of  court  and  aristocratic  life  in  Old  France. 

The  effect  of  the  seignorial  system  in  fusing  the  people  into 
a  harmonious  whole  was  very  notable.  Though  originating  in 
class  distinctions,  it  completely  obliterated  class  hostility.  The 
Abbe  Casgrain  graphically  describes  the  actual  result  of  a  seig- 
norial concession  under  the  old  regime.  "The  whole  colonization 
system  of  New  France  rested  on  two  men,"  he  says,  "the  priest  and 
the  seigneur,  who  walked  side  by  side  and  extended  mutual  help 
to  one  another.  The  cciisitairc,  who  was  at  the  same  time  the 
parishioner,  had  two  rallying  points,  the  church  and  the  manor 
house.  The  interests  of  these  were  generally  identical,  inasmuch 
as  the  limits  of  the  seignory  were  with  few  exceptions  coterminous 
with  those  of  the  parish.  Every  fall,  as  Michaelmas  approached, 
(nth  November)  the  seigneur  warned  his  coisifaircs  at  the  church 
door  after  mass,  that  their  ecus  et  rentes  were  payable.  As  soon 
as  the  winter  roads  were  good  the  manor  house  became  the 
centre  of  as  lively  activity  as  the  preshytcre  or  parish  house  to-day 
when  the  inhabitants  assemble  to  pay  their  tithes.  Some  arrived 
in  carioles,  some  on  sleighs,  bringing  with  them  a  capon  or  two, 
oats  by  the  bushel,  or  other  products  of  their  land.  The  old  re- 
devance  amounted  to  only  two  livres  per  acre  of  frontage  by  forty- 
two  acres  in  depth,  and  to  one  sou  rental  per  year.  The  censi- 
tairc  who  owned  four  acres  by  forty-two  in  depth  had  paid  for 
his  farm  only  eight  francs,  and  was  liable  for  only  an  annual 
rental  of  four  sous  per  front  arpent." 

In  the  old  days  land  was  seldom  transferred,  and  the  revenue, 
therefore,  was  much  less  than  afterwards  accrued,  to  certain  seig- 
neurs, from  lods  et  ventes,  when  the  population  had  become  more 
migratory,  and  the  shifting  values  of  real  estate  tempted  the  oc- 
cupant to  sell. 


240  QUEBEC   IN   THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY, 

It  was  a  frig-htfully  cold  winter,  that  of  1634-5.  The 
river  was  frozen  from  shore  to  shore.  The  Indians  died  from 
famine  in  great  numbers,  and  in  the  new  Jesuit  settlement  of 
Three  Rivers  several  deaths  occurred  from  scurvy.  The  fleet 
of  the  following  spring  arrived  late,  owing  to  the  heavy  ice 
off  the  coast  and  in  the  Gulf.  Captain  Duplessis  Bochard  with  a 
fleet  of  six  ships  did  not  reach  Tadousac  till  early  in  July,  and 
one  belated  ship,  commanded  by  Captain  Butemps,  did  not  reach 
port  till  August.  They  brought  out  six  priests,  but  how  many 
immigrants  the  Jesuit  chroniclers  do  not  tell  us.  There  were 
now  in  the  colony  fourteen  priests  and  four  brothers.  The  sum- 
mer was  une^'entful.  The  Huron  hunters  came  down  with  their 
furs  in  July,  bringing  letters  from  the  Jesuit  missionaries  con- 
tradicting the  reports  of  death  and  misfortune,  which  had  reached 
their  brethren  in  the  East.  All  were  well  and  reported  a 
hearty  welcome  by  the  Indians  of  Lake  Huron.  This  encouraged 
Champlain  to  repeat  his  exhortation  to  the  dusky  warriors  to  ac- 
cept civilization  and  adopt  Christianity,  and  fit  their  daughters  to 
become  the  wives  of  his  French  followers.  Could  he  have  been 
so  enthusiastic  as  to  believe  in  the  possible  realization  of  such  a 
scheme?  At  any  rate  it  is  pleasant  to  think  that  his  hopes 
ran  high  at  the  very  time  when  he  was  stricken  down  by 
paralysis.  He  lingered  for  two  and  half  months  and  died 
on  Christmas  day,  1635.  He  was  buried  with  all  the  honors 
the  garrison,  the  church,  and  the  people  could  confer  on  a 
man  whom  all  loved  and  respected ;  for,  into  whatever  errors 
of  judgment  he  may  have  fallen,  he  never  committed  an  intentional 
injustice  or  acted  from  low,  selfish,  or  mercenary  motives.  His 
friend,  Father  Lalemant,  performed  the  funeral  service,  and  Father 
le  Jeune  delivered  the  funeral  oration  in  the  church  he  had 
himself  built  in  honor  of  the  Virgin ;  and  they  buried  him 
in  a  scpiilcre  particuUcr,  but  where?  Not  a  hint  is  given  as  to 
the  place  of  his  interment.  Mr.  O'Donnell,  a  city  official  of  Que- 
bec, disinterred  from  a  stone  vault  under  the  Little  Champlain 
street  steps,  in  i860,  a  coffin  containing  human  bones  which  he 
argued  were  the  remains  of  the  illustrious  founder  of  Quebec. 
But  the  church  he  founded,  and  which  he  wished  to  endow  with 


THE  DF.ATIl   OF   CIIAMPLAIN.  24I 

most  of  his  worldly  goods,  was  in  the  Upper  Town,  and  under  it  or 
beneath  its  choir,  and  nowhere  else,  he  must  have  wished  to  be 
laid  to  rest.  The  Church  of  Notre  Dame  de  la  Recouvrancc,  with 
its  register,  containing,  it  must  be  assumed,  the  record  of  his  death 
and  interment,  was  burned  in  1640.  Monsieur  Laverdiere  believed 
that  he  had  discovered  and  traced  the  remains  of  the  foundation  of 
the  old  church  in  the  yard  of  the  Presbytere  in  Buade  street. 
These  foundations,  if  they  belonged  to  the  old  church,  would  in- 
dicate that  it  did  not  point  east  and  west,  for  what  Laverdiere 
assumes  to  be  the  choir  lay  diagonally  under  part  of  the  apse  of 
the  present  basilica.  That  this  was  the  orientation  of  Cham- 
plain's  church  is  confirmed  by  the  finding,  as  recorded  by  Abbe 
George  Cote,  when  some  repairs  were  being  made  in  the  vaults  of 
the  basilica  in  1877,  of  a  skeleton,  whose  skull  instead  of  lying  in 
the  direction  of  tlie  nave  lay  transverse  to  the  choir.  As  no  rec- 
ord of  any  such  interment  exists  in  the  archives  of  the  cathedral, 
the  remains  are  supposed  to  be  those  of  some  one  buried  under 
the  choir  of  Notre  Dame  de  la  Recouvrance.  If  this  supposition 
be  correct,  then  the  body  of  the  illustrious  founder  of  Quebec 
may  also  repose  where  it,  above  all  others,  has  the  right  of  sepul- 
ture, beneath  the  choir  of  the  cathedral,  raised  to  the  dignity  of 
a  basilica  on  the  200th  anniversary  of  the  foundation  of  the  epis- 
copate of  Quebec. 

Father  \'imont.  in  the  Relation  of  1640,  in  describing  the  fire 
which  swept  away  their  home,  says :  'Tt  reduced  to  ashes  the 
chapel  of  Monsieur  le  Gouverneur  and  the  parish  church."  This 
would  imply  that  there  were  two  ecclesiastical  edifices,  or  that 
there  was  a  chapel  in  the  parish  church  which  went  by  the  name  of 
the  Governor's  chapel,  presumably  because  Champlain's  remains 
reposed  there.  It  is  contrary  to  the  known  character  of  Governor 
Montmagny  to  imagine  that  he  would  ever  so  far  depart  from 
the  simplicity  and  habits  of  his  illustrious  predecessor  as  to  erect 
a  chapel  for  his  private  devotions.  The  Jesuit  fathers  distinctly 
state  that  in  his  humility  he  always  knelt  with  other  parishioners 
to  receive  the  sacrament.  It  may  naturally  have  been  supposed 
that  it  would  act  as  a  stimulus  to  devotion  to  consecrate,  as  the 
Governor's   chapel,   a   spot   almost   sanctified   bv   the   remains  of 


242  QUEBEC   IN  Tini  SEVENTEliNTII  C]<:NTURY. 

Champlain.  The  scpiilcrc  particnlicr  of  Chaniplain  must  have  ueen 
a  vault;  for  his  friend,  Father  Raymbouh,  who  died  in  1642,  was 
buried  beside  liim.  Nor  was  he  the  first  who  was  thus  honored.  In 
1641  the  register  records  that  on  the  2d  of  May  of  that  year, 
Mons.  Frangois  Grand-niont,  a  prominent  meml)er  of  the  Com- 
pany and  the  original  owner  of  Sillery,  died  in  the  room  under 
the  sacristy  and  chapel  of  Quebec.  This  chapel  was  in  the 
second  story  of  the  company's  house,  which  was  temporarily 
occupied  as  a  place  of  worship  after  the  burning  of  Notre  Dame 
de  la  Recouvrance.  Here  Monsieur  Grand-mont  had  spent  his 
winter  and  here  he  died.  On  the  21st,  after  tlie  office  of  the  dead 
and  solemn  mass  had  been  sung,  he  was  buried,  so  the  register 
says,  in  the  chapel  of  Monsieur  de  Champlain.  It  does  not  say  in 
the  actual  vault.  Thence  we  should  infer  that  the  vault  in  the  Gov- 
ernor's chapel  of  the  Church  of  Notre  Dame  de  la  Recouvrance 
had  passed  uninjured  through  the  fire,  and  that  over  it  had  been 
built  a  chapel.  This  chapel  is  mentioned  as  a  landmark  in  a  deed 
by  Governor  D'Aillebout  in  February,  1649,  when  reserving  an 
acre  of  land  in  the  town  of  Quebec  for  public  purposes,  contrc  la 
chapcUe  CJimnplain.  But  in  the  maps  of  Quebec  made  in  1660 
and  1664  see  Faillon.  Histoire  de  la  Colonic  Frangaise,  vol.  3, 
page  373),  this  chapel  does  not  appear.  It  had  probably  been  ab- 
sorbed by  the  large  parish  church,  the  predecessor  of  the  cathedral, 
and  of  the  present  basilica,  which  appears  on  the  map  as  a  notable 
feature  of  the  town.  Within  its  foundation  walls,  therefore,  may 
yet  be  found  that  sepulcre  particnlicr,  with  its  precious  contents. 
It  is  a  grateful  thought  tliat  the  first  governor  of  New  France 
rests  near  Frontenac,  Callieres,  Vaudreuil  and  Longueil  in  this 
pantheon  of  French  heroes.*  Only  a  tablet  records  the  fact  that 
these  remains  rest  there  in  peace.  A  monument  should  be  erected 
worthy  of  his  fame  and  achievements ;  and  there  is  little  doubt  that 
this  could  easily  be  done  by  means  of  contributions  gratefully  sub- 
scribed by  men  of  both  nationalities  and  every  creed  in  Canada 
and  the  United  States. 

Champlain  left  a  will  by  which  he  bequeathed  to  the  church  he 
had  founded  in  Quebec  all  his  personal  effects  in  Canada.  300 

*See  a  full  discussion  of  the  subject  l>y  Dr.  Dionne  in  bis  chapter  on  "  The 
Tomb  of  Champlain,"  Etudes  Ilistoriques, 


A   NOBLE  HISTORICAL  CHARACTER.  243 

livres  in  the  stock  of  the  original  company  of  One  Hnndred  As- 
sociates, 900  hvres  in  the  auxiliary  company's  stock,  and  400  livres 
in  cash.  But  when  he  married  llelene  Boulle  there  was  a  marriage 
contract  by  which  husband  and  wife  mutually  bequeathed  each  to 
the  other  whatever  they  might  die  possessed  of.  His  wife  consented 
to  the  will,  but  liis  cousin  opposed  it,  on  the  ground  that  it  con- 
tradicted the  marriage  contract.  The  will  w^as  set  aside,  the  judge 
allowing  to  the  Chapelle  de  Notre  Dame  only  the  proceeds  of  the 
sale  of  Chami)lain's  personal  effects,  some  900  livres,  which  were 
expended  in  vessels  for  the  altar.  His  widow  survived  him  nine- 
teen years,  dying  in  a  nunnery  of  her  own  founding.  Like  most 
converts — for  it  nuist  be  remembered  that  she  was  a  Huguenot  in 
her  early  life — she  was  so  extreme  in  her  devotion  to  her  adopted 
faith  that,  even  during  her  husband's  life,  she  is  said  to  have  de- 
cided to  enter  a  convent  and  take  the  veil.  The  laws  of  the  church 
denied  her  that  gratification  unless  her  husband  would  also  re- 
nounce his  marriage  vows  and  adopt  a  religious  life.  This  the  old 
sailor  and  busy  man  of  the  world  declined  to  do,  looking  on  his 
work  as  more  valuable  to  his  country  and  more  pleasing  to  God 
than  would  have  been  the  donning  of  a  clerical  or  monastic  habit. 

•  He  lives  in  history  as  a  brave,  single-hearted  sailor  and  ex- 
plorer, who  had  a  clear  conception  of  duty  and  followed  his  con- 
victions without  swerving  or  wavering.  Few  men  are  honest 
enough  to  tell  the  story  of  their  life  as  simply  as  he  did,  without 
exaggeration,  or  self-laudation,  or  insincere  self-derogation,  or 
cant.  He  was  not  a  great  soldier  or  a  great  statesman.  Had  he 
been  the  first,  he  would  have  pursued  with  more  determination 
and  method  his  policy  of  subduing  the  native  tribes  opposed  to 
him  ;  and  had  he  been  the  second,  he  would  prol)ably  have  suc- 
ceeded by  diplomacy  in  creating  a  strong  confederacy  out  of  those 
with  which  he  was  on  friendly  terms.  Nevertheless,  if  not 
in  the  highest  sense  a  great  man,  he  was  endowed  with  a 
courage  and  straightforwardness  of  purpose  that  were  proof 
against  a  thousand  disappointments  and  broken  promises.  These 
virtues  buoyed  him  up  till,  after  seventeen  years  of  hope  deferred 
yet  of  faith  unshaken,  he  saw  Quebec  growing  from  a  post  into  a 
town,  and  Canada  assuming  the  character  of  a  colony. 


CHAPTER   XL 

The  Arrival  of  Governor  Montmagny,  and  the  Establish- 
ment of  the  Ursuline  and  Hospital  Nuns  at  Quebec. 

The  company  had  provided  for  the  contingency  of  Cham- 
plain's  death  by  depositing  with  Father  le  Jeune  a  commission  in 
favor  of  Mare  Antoine  Bras  de  Fer  de  Chasteaufort,  of  Three 
Rivers,  as  his  temporary  successor.  The  document  was  read  after 
the  funeral  service.  The  colonists  acquiesced.  The  Governor 
was  prostrate  from  paral}-sis  when  the  fall  fleet  sailed,  but  the 
news  of  his  death  having  actually  occurred  must  have  been  sent 
to  France  through  some  port  on  the  Atlantic  seaboard ;  other- 
wise Charles  Hault  de  Montmagny  would  not  have  been  nomi- 
nated to  the  governorship,  and  his  appointment  confirmed  by 
the  Cardinal  on  the  loth  of  March.  With  such  expedi- 
tion was  a  fleet  equipped  to  escort  the  new  official  to  the  seat  of 
his  government,  that  he  arrived  before  Quebec  on  the  evening  of 
the  nth  of  June,  to  the  intense  relief  of  the  townsfolk.  They 
knew  that  France  had  embarked  in  a  great  war  (The  Thirty 
Years'  War),  in  alliance  with  the  Swedes,  the  Germans  and 
the  Dutch  against  Spain,  and  they  dreaded  that  Spain,  exasperat- 
ed by  the  aid  given  to  the  Protestant  cause  by  Catholic  France, 
might  attempt  to  wreak  on  the  still  feeble  colony  the  same  awful 
vengeance  which  she  had  inflicted  by  the  hand  of  Menendez  upon 
Ribault's  colony  in  Florida.  But  even  if  such  a  fate  were  spared 
them,  they  feared  that  the  mother  country,  in  the  throes  of 
a  great  war,  would  need  all  her  resources  to  meet  the  at- 
tack of  Spain,  and  might  neglect  them  as  she  had  done  be- 
fore Kirke's  invasion.  Great  therefore  was  the  joy  of  the  whole 
community  when  they  recognized  in  the  new  Governor  a  soldier 
of  some  renown,  and  a  knight  of  the  order  of  St.  John  of  Malta. 
To  the  j)riests  the  appointment  of  a  celibate,  with  no  wife  to 
tempt  him  to  change  the  austere  routine  of  the  castle  life  into  a 
round  of  courtly  gayeties,  must  have  given  promise  of  another 


GOVERNOR  MONTMAGNY   AND  THE  IROQUOIS.  245 

regime  of  strict  and  edifying  fulfillment  of  all  religious  duties  and 
observances. 

The  profound  piety  of  the  new  Governor  was  demonstrated  by 
his  stopping  the  procession  on  its  way  to  the  inaugural  service  in 
the  Church  of  Notre  Dame  de  la  Recouvrance,  and  falling  on  his 
knees  before  a  cross  which  met  his  view.  In  the  same  spirit,  im- 
mediately after  the  Te  Deiini  had  been  sung  and  the  keys  of  the 
Chateau  and  Fort  delivered  to  him  by  Monsieur  de  Chasteaufort, 
he  stood  sponsor  at  the  baptismal  font  for  an  Indian  child. 

In  July  of  this  year  (1636)  there  was  a  large  gathering  at 
Quebec  of  Montagnais  Indians  from  Tadousac,  when  the  Gover- 
nor had  his  first  lesson  in  diplomacy  from  these  wily  savages. 
Their  chief  desire  was,  as  usual,  to  induce  the  French  to  become 
their  allies  against  the  Iroquois,  and  their  orators  could  always 
adduce  cogent  arguments  that  appealed  to  the  self-interest  and 
pride  of  the  French.  On  the  other  hand,  the  French  had  other 
than  motives  of  gain  in  urging  the  red  men  to  forbear  trading 
either  with  the  Dutch  on  the  Hudson  or  with  the  English  poachers 
in  the  Gulf.  Three  arquebuses  were  found  in  the  camp  of  a  Mon- 
tagnais band  at  Three  Rivers.  The  Governor,  indeed,  was  soon  to 
learn  that  the  bravest  race  of  Indians  on  the  continent  were  already 
in  possession  of  firearms,  and  that  thus  the  superiority  which  the 
few  white  men  enjoyed  in  virtue  of  their  weapons  was  in  danger 
of  disappearing.  After  this  council  the  new  Governor  ascended 
the  river  to  Three  Rivers,  which  had  now  supplanted  Quebec  as  a 
trading  post,  just  as  Montreal  in  time  replaced  Three  Rivers, 
the  danger  from  the  Iroquois  making  it  increasingly  desirable  to 
shift  the  market  as  near  as  possible  to  the  source  of  supply. 

Ere  he  left  Three  Rivers  Montmagny  was  called  upon  to 
bring  his  military  skill  into  exercise  against  this  formidable 
foe,  a  very  different  one  from  any  he  had  ever  faced.  The  Iro- 
quois, to  the  number  of  five  hundred,  had  descended  the  Riche- 
lieu, and,  intercepting  a  fleet  of  Flurons,  had  captured  two  of 
the  most  noted  Huron  chiefs,  several  youths  destined  for 
the  Huron  seminary  at  Quebec,  and  other  less  important 
members  of  the  tribe.  Besides  seizing  the  traders  they  se- 
cured  rich  booty   in   their   stock   of   furs.      The   Governor   with- 


246  QUEBEC  IN  TJiE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

drew  the  French,  the  friendly  Alontagnais  and  Algonquins, 
and  the  Hurons  who  had  escaped,  into  the  fort  of  Three  Rivers, 
which  consisted  of  a  mere  breastwork,  and  there  prepared  for  an 
attack.  To  each  of  the  six  priests  he  assigned  a  special  duty. 
Messengers  were  sent  to  Quebec  for  help,  and  aid  was  at  once 
sent  him.  The  fleet  was  in  Quebec,  and  their  crews  were  glad  to 
be  enlisted  in  such  an  exciting  enterprise.  The  ship's  boats  from 
Mons.  de  I'lsle's  ship,  manned  by  a  number  of  his  crew,  were 
the  first  to  arrive  at  Three  Rivers,  and  a  schooner  followed,  com- 
manded by  Captain  Raymbaut.  Nor  were  the  prominent  citizens 
of  Quebec  backward  in  responding  to  the  call.  Sieurs  Couillard 
and  Giffard  and  other  notables  hurried  to  the  front.  But  before 
they  arrived  the  Governor  had  armed  the  two  ships'  boats, 
one  commanded  by  the  Sieur  Desdames  and  the  other  by  Captain 
Fournier,  and,  under  their  protection,  proceeded  in  his  own  row- 
boat  to  attack  the  fleet  of  canoes  and  drive  the  Iroquois  out  of 
Lake  St.  Peter,  so  as  to  reopen  the  river  to  the  Huron  traders. 
Aware  of  his  design  and  preparations  the  foe  had  disappear- 
ed, leaving  at  the  mouth  of  the  Richelieu  traces  of  their  barbarous 
cruelty,  but  carrying  off  most  of  their  prisoners,  together  with  the 
furs,  which  they  meant  to  barter  with  the  Dutch  at  Fort 
Nassau.  The  volunteers  must  have  returned  to  Quebec  with 
gloomy  forebodings,  for  the  success  of  the  Iroquois  in 
an  attack  made  under  the  verv  guns  of  the  fort,  and  before 
the  eyes  of  the  Governor  himself,  was  sure  to  embolden  them  to 
undertake  still  more  venturesome  enterprises.  They  were  being 
supplied  with  guns  and  ammunition  In^  the  Dutch  in  exchange  for 
their  furs.  The  very  booty  they  had  just  carried  off  across  Lake 
Champlain  into  the  valley  of  the  Hudson  meant  many  guns  and 
hundreds  of  rounds  of  ammunition,  which,  if  directed  against  the 
200  inhabitants  of  Quebec  before  the  fleet  arrived  or  after  its  de- 
parture, might  involve  the  destruction  of  the  colony.  Montmagny, 
immediately  on  assuming  the  government,  had  strengthened  the 
river  fort  at  Quebec  by  a  redoubt  facing  the  river,  and  mounted 
additional  cannons  on  it.  The  Indians,  while  powerless  to  en- 
ter the  fort,  could  yet  seriously  harass  the  inhabitants  and  destroy 
all  outlying  settlements.  There  were,  in  fact,  grounds  for  the  keen- 


A    PIOUS    COMMUNITY.  247 

est  apprehension,  as  subsequent  events  fully  proved.  The 
bold  attack  on  the  Huron  fleet  was  the  beginning  of  an  Indian 
war  which  lasted,  with  occasional  lulls,  for  more  than  a  century. 

The  Governor  waited  at  Three  Rivers  till  the  end  of  August, 
hoping  that  the  Indians  would  regain  courage  and  appear;  but 
as  the  fleet  for  France  was  about  to  sail,  he  and  Father  le  Jeune 
were  obliged  to  descend  to  Quebec.  They  had  hardly  landed 
when  news  of  the  arrival  of  150  Hurons  at  Three  Rivers  was 
received.  Montmagny  sent  his  lieutenant,  the  Chevalier  de  iTsle, 
to  meet  them,  and  Mons.  le  Jeune  accompanied  him.  It  was  ne- 
cessary to  show  more  than  customary  courtesy  and  considera- 
tion to  the  savages,  for  an  epidemic,  which  they  attributed 
to  the  machinations  of  the  French,  and  especially  to  the  in- 
cantations of  the  missionaries,  had  broken  out  on  the 
Georgian  Bay  and  was  ravaging  the  tribe.  The  fleet  there- 
fore sailed  away  with  lighter  cargoes  than  usual,  and  with 
a  budget  of  bad  news.  This  was  certainly,  for  the  Governor, 
a  discouraging  introduction  to  his  duties ;  but  to  cheer  him 
there  returned  Fathers  Daniel  and  Davost,  with  the  Huron 
traders,  who  brought  back  glowing  accounts  of  their  mission- 
ary success,  and  a  description  of  the  beautiful  Georgian  Bay,  and 
of  the  lakes  and  rivers  and  the  illimitable  country  that  lay  be- 
tween the  St.  Lawrence  and  Lake  Huron.  They  moreover  told 
what  they  had  heard  of  the  still  vaster  waters  and  wider  lands  that 
lay  beyond  to  the  west.  But  these  almost  fabulous  stories  do  not 
seem  to  have  excited  the  Governor's  imagination,  which  might 
well  have  glowed  at  the  thought  of  the  greatness  awaiting  the 
parent  State  through  the  expansion  of  her  colonial  empire — an 
empire  that  would  be  hers  without  challenge,  as  neither  the  col- 
onists in  Virginia,  nor  the  sedate  Puritans  of  New  England,  nor 
the  sluggish  Dutch  of  New  Netherland,  had  ventured  far  enough 
away  from  their  homes  on  the  sea  coast  to  get  a  glimpse  of  the 
vast  interior  of  the  Continent. 

The  winter  was  probably  the  season  in  which  the  religious 
enthusiasm  and  social  purity  mentioned  in  the  letters  trans- 
mitted to  France,  as  characterizing  society  in  Quebec,  was  seen  to 
most  advantage.     The  priests  could,  during  that  season,   watch 


248  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

each  of  thei*-  parishioners  and  restrain  their  foibles  and 
their  faults ,  but  when  summer  arrived,  and  with  it  came  the 
fleet  full  ol  reckless  sailors,  a  contagion  of  vice  spread ;  the  whole 
community  then  suffered  a  lowering  of  its  religious  temperature, 
and  fell  away  very  sensibly  from  its  high  moral  standard.  The 
ships  occasionally  also,  despite  the  prohibition  against  the  impor- 
tation of  heresy,  landed  and  left  in  the  colony  emigrants  tainted 
with  what  Father  le  Jeune  called  "the  alleged  religion,"  but 
these  stray  sheep  were  unable  to  withstand  the  arguments  of  the 
priests  and  the  pressure  of  public  opinion.  In  short,  no  one  re- 
mained long  in  the  colony  who  questioned  the  authority  of  the 
Churcli. 

There  was  even  greater  and  more  perfect  religious  unanimity 
than  in  the  Puritan  colonies  of  New  England,  though  in  both  com- 
munities religion  was  the  foundation  of  the  State.  The  directors 
of  the  company  of  New  France  laid  it  down  as  an  absolute  rule 
that  "to  build  up  the  body  of  a  healthy  colony  religion  is  essential, 
being  to  the  State  what  the  heart  is  to  the  human  body — its  most 
vital  organ."  But  the  religious  spirit  of  the  French  colony  was  less 
gloomy  than  that  of  the  Puritan  commonwealth,  and  its  form  of 
worship  less  severe.  Music  and  color  and  the  dramatically  ef- 
fective details  of  vestment  and  posture  in  the  altar  service,  the 
result  of  the  aesthetic  expression  of  the  religious  feeling  of  the 
most  artistic  peoples  of  southern  Europe,  were  well  calculated  to 
retain  a  firm  hold  on  the  French  colonists  to  whom  they  were  tra- 
ditionally sacred,  and  to  appeal  to  the  senses  of  the  Indians,  edu- 
cated in  sign  language  and  picture  writing.  Both  communities 
were  pledged  to  a  religious  life  and  missionary  propagand- 
ism  among  the  aborigines  ; but,  looking  back  over  nearly  three  cen- 
turies, we  cannot  fail  to  recognize  that  primitive  Roman  Catho- 
licism has  retained  its  influence  over  the  French  of  Lower  Canada 
more  effectually  than  Puritanism,  in  its  primitive  form,  has  main- 
tained its  hold  on  the  people  of  New  England.  It  must  1:)c  added 
that  Roman  Catholicism,  with  its  florid,  picturesque  ritual  and  less 
abstract  creed,  has  also  been  more  comprehensible  to  the  Indians 
than  the  metaphysical  dogmas  of  Calvinism.  The  Jesuit  Fathers 
clearly  understood  this,  and  tlic  festival  of  St.  Joseph,  who  is  re- 


Ceut  tguic  it  met  eu  la  page  j;,  dt  laHeUtion  de  Caaidas, 
Fireworks  on  the  Feast  vl  St.  Joseph. 


THE  NATIVES  DISCUSS   THEOLOGY.  249 

cognized  as  the  patron  saint  of  Canada,  was  celebrated  by  a  great 
display  of  fireworks,  the  Governor  himself  lighting  the  set  piece 
and  explaining  to  the  Indians,  through  an  interpreter,  that  the 
French  were  more  powerful  than  even  the  demons,  for  tiiey  could 
call  forth  fire  at  will,  and  tise  it  when  they  listed  to  burn  the  bodies 
of  their  enemies.  Thus  too  the  fcasc  of  Mary,  patroness  of  the 
church  of  Quebec,  was  inaugurated  by  hoisting  the  royal  ensign 
on  the  bastion  of  the  fort  amidst  a  salvo  of  artillery  and  the  rattle 
of  musketry,  and  raising  a  maypole  before  the  church,  surmounted 
by  three  crowns,  emblems  of  Jesus,  Mary  and  Joseph.  By  such 
means  religion  and  the  civil  power  came  to  be  indissolubly  asso- 
ciated in  the  minds  of  the  Indians.* 

The  Governor  actively  aided  the  Fathers  in  their  endeavors 
to  teach  the  natives.  In  the  middle  of  December,  after  the  Mon- 
tagnais  had  started  on  their  winter's  hunt,  there  remained  a  band 
of  Algonquins  camped  near  the  fort.  The  Governor  gave  them  a 
feast,  and  while  their  mouths  and  their  hearts  were  full,  he  ex- 
tracted a  promise  from  them  to  visit  betimes  the  mission  house 
of  Notre  Dame  des  Anges.  Thus  commenced  a  series  of  con- 
ferences, wherein  discussions  were  by  no  means  one-sided,  for  the 
Fathers,  trained  though  they  were  in  dialectics,  found  it  difficult 
sometimes  to  deal  with  the  arguments  of  their  savage  opponents. 
The  Indians  insisted  on  reasons  being  given  for  the  fact  that  since 
the  advent  of  the  white  men,  who  pretended  to  ofifer  nothing  but 
blessings  to  them,  the  mortality  of  the  tribe  had  so  dangerously 
increased  as  to  threaten  it  with  extinction.     The  priest  attributed 

*  Rev.  John  Miller,  in  his  New  York  Considered  and  Improved,  1695, 
charges  the  French  with  debauching  "so  many  of  our  Indians  as  they  have  made 
Christians  &  obliged  by  so  doing  some  of  our  Mohawks  so  much  yt  one  of  them, 
as  I  have  heard,  having  run  away  from  us  to  them  &  thereupon  being  upbraided 
with  his  infidelity  in  forsaking  his  old  friends,  in  his  own  defence  made  answer 
that  he  had  lived  long  among  the  English,  but  they  had  never  all  that  while  had 
so  much  love  for  him  as  to  instruct  him  in  the  concerns  of  his  soul  &  show  him 
the  way  to  salvation,  which  the  French  had  done  upon  their  first  Acquaintance 
with  him,  &  therefore  he  was  obliged  to  love  &  be  faithfull  to  them,  &  ingage  as 
many  of  his  nation  as  he  could  to  go  along  with  him  &  to  partake  of  the  same 
knowledge  &  instructions  that  were  afforded  &  imparted  to  him,  so  that  it  appears 
to  be  a  worke  not  only  of  great  charity  but  of  almost  absolute  necessity  to  endeavor 
the  conversion  of  the  five  Nations  and  other  Indians,  lest  they  be  wholly  de- 
bauched by  ye  French  &  become  by  God's  just  permission  for  our  ne^^lect  therein 
of  faithfull  &  true  friends  as  they  have  been  hitherto,  most  dangerous  &  cruel' 
Enem_ys."  Debauching  must  here  be  understood  in  its  political  sense — as  with- 
drawing from  an  alliance. 


250  QUEBEC  IX  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

it  to  alcohol,  but  alcohol  did  not  explain  the  inroads  of  small-pox. 
Furthermore,  the  Indians  were  all  aware  that  it  was  believed 
among  the  whites  that,  as  they  entered,  the  aborigines  would 
disappear.  Yet  every  endeavor  was  being  made  to  increase  white 
immigration,  and  they  could  not  reconcile  that  with  the  benevolent 
intentions  of  the  Black  Robes.  It  also  puzzled  the  Indians  to  un- 
derstand wherein  resided  the  benefits  of  baptism,  inasmuch  as 
nearly  all  those  whom  the  priests  had  baptized,  whether  young  or 
old,  had  died.  This  was  a  fact,  inasmuch  as,  almost  without  ex- 
ception, those  to  whom  the  sacrament  had  been  administered  were 
either  children  about  to  die,  or  the  aged  who  had  submitted  to  it 
when  death  was  near.  Another  difficulty  was  to  reconcile 
the  ardent  wdsh  expressed  by  the  good  Fathers,  that  they  should 
abandon  their  roving  life,  with  the  interest  the  same  good  Fathers 
professed  to  take  in  them  as  a  nation,  for  they  could  not  con- 
ceive of  life,  individual  or  national,  apart  from  the  excitement 
and  profits  of  the  chase.  Demonology,  which  was  a  favorite 
theme  with  tliem,  also  presented  perplexities.  Why,  if  God  were 
willing  to  forgive,  should  devils  be  excluded  from  his  mercy?  The 
good  Fathers  replied  that  salvation  was  extended  only  to  those 
who  could  hope,  w'here'^s  despair  was  the  penaltv  of  hell.  This 
seemed  hardly  conclusive,  and  the  mystery  of  evil  continued  to 
puzzle  them  as  it  has  puzzled  men  in  all  ages. 

But  Christianity  as  presented  in  the  lives  of  the  priests,  and 
later  in  the  glorious  devotion  to  charitable  work  of  the  Ursuline 
and  Grey  Nuns,  won  more  converts  than  the  terrors  of  hell,  not- 
w^ithstanding  that  these  were  presented  in  all  their  realistic  hor- 
rors. The  religious  leaders  of  the  colony  soon  reached  the 
conclusion  that  there  was  less  to  be  gained  by  arguing  w^ith 
the  old  than  by  instructing  the  young.  These  stern  but 
tender-hearted  priests  looked  after  the  children  in  the  ab- 
sence of  the  hunters,  and,  gathering  the  boys  and  girls  around 
I'hem  in  the  long  winter  months,  taught  them  to  sing  and 
pray,  and  filled  their  young  minds  with  the  story  of  the  Master's 
love  and  his  tenderness  for  little  ones.  The  second  generation  of 
the  Montagnais  and  Algonquins.  as  well  as  of  the  Hurons,  who 
had  come  under  the  teaching  of  the  Church,  though  they  may  not 


THE    JESUIT    "RELATIONS.  25 1 

have  been  specimens  of  the  purest  prothicts  of  Christianity,  were 
raised  far  above  tlie  abject  savagery  of  tlieir  parents. 

While  the  missionaries  by  their  devotion  and  tact  were  winning 
converts  among  the  Indians,  and  by  their  watchfuhiess  insur- 
ing the  morals  of  the  colonists,  the  story  of  their  hardships  and 
missionary  successes,  told  in  such  luminous  detail  in  the  Kclaliu)is, 
and  published  year  by  year  in  France,  was  kindling  ardent  enthusi- 
asm among  the  pious  laity  at  home.  As  we  critically  read  the  Rela- 
tions even  to-day,  we  cannot  avoid  sharing  in  the  entimsiasm  they 
evoked,  and  forgiving  the  lapses  from  accuracy  which  gave  them 
the  glamour  of  romance.  For  example.  Father  Ic  Jeune  employed 
his  literary  skill  in  drawing  dreary  jiictures  of  the  forlorn  post  as 
it  appeared  in  1632,  and  most  attractive  ones  of  the  thriving  town 
into  which  it  had  grow-n  within  four  years,  though  it  had  gathered 
in  the  interval  only  aljout  150  inhabitants.  But  the  good  Father 
certainly  allows  his  ardor  to  master  his  sense  of  truth  wlicn  he 
states  that  on  their  arrival  they  found  only  one  inhabitant  engaged 
in  farming,  and  that  one  eager  to  flee  away  in  order  to  enjoy  the 
offices  of  the  True  Faith  in  Old  France.  While  it  is  impossible 
to  doubt  that  the  zeal  of  Father  le  Jeune  and  his  colleagues  was 
sincere,  the  Relations  were  manifestly  written  with  the  triple  ob- 
ject of  magnifying  the  missionary  work  of  the  Society  of  Jesus, 
soliciting  subscriptions  for  their  great  schemes,  and  glorifying  tiic 
colonization  efforts  and  the  religious  motives  of  the  company  of 
One  Hundred  Associates  and  its  officers.  None  the  less,  the  ad- 
vice given  by  Father  le  Jeune  to  intending  immigrants  is  sound, 
and  might  with  advantage  be  embodied  in  the  emigration  litera- 
ture put  into  circulation  to-day. 

The  almost  monastic  regimen  imposed  on  the  colonists  was  oc- 
casionally relieved  by  glimpses  of  the  pageantry  of  war.  The 
Governor  and  his  lieutenant  were  soldiers  and  loved  martial  dis- 
play. Sentries  were  posted  at  the  castle,  and,  on  every  ordinary  and 
extraordinary  occasion,  there  was  a  review  of  the  handful  of 
troops  and  a  discharge  of  firearms.  But,  better  still.  MM. 
de  Repentigny  and  de  la  Potherie  had  just  arrived  with  six  un- 
married daughters,  "beautiful  as  the  day."  to  quote  the  enthusias- 
tic figure  of  speech  elicited  even  from  the  Jesuits  by  their  appari- 


252  QUEBI'X  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

tion.  Order  generally  prevailed ;  yet  were  there  unruly  spirits 
who  regarded  the  mildest  laws  as  shackles.  It  was  not  the  dav 
of  legislative  assemblies,  however;  and  the  Governor  and  the 
priests,  who  made  the  laws,  enforced  them  rigidly  against  all 
backsliders,  recalcitrants  and  other  offenders.  On  the  29th 
of  December,  a  pillory  was  erected  before  the  cliurch,  and 
on  it  was  posted  a  list  of  crimes,  including  Idasphemy, 
drunkenness,  absence  from  mass  on  feast  days,  all  punishable 
by  exposure  in  the  stocks.  It  was  the  season  of  hilarity,  but 
that  was  not  admitted  as  an  excuse  by  the  ecclesiastical  censors. 
The  pillory  had  been  erected  only  a  week  when  a  public  example 
was  made  of  a  drunkard,  whose  crime  had  been  aggravated  by 
improper  language.  On  January  22nd  a  fine  of  50  livres  was  im- 
posed on  a  reckless  fellow  who  had  made  an  Indian  drunk.  The 
French  accused  the  English  under  Kirke  of  being  the  first  to 
demoralize  the  Indians  by  giving  them  a  taste  for  intoxicating 
liquor.  If  the  Huguenot  Company  was  as  sordid  and  as 
regardless  of  all  moral  obligations  as  they  arc  represented  to 
have  been,  it  is  much  to  be  wondered  at  that  they  did  not  use  ar- 
dent spirits  in  trading  with  the  redskins  before  Kirke's  occupancy. 
Whoever  was  guilty,  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  of  Canada  has 
from  the  first  offered  a  magnificent  and  consistent  opposition  to 
the  sale  of  intoxicating  liquors  to  the  native  Indians.  More 
was  done  in  this  matter  by  moral  suasion  than  by  law.  'Father 
Lalemant  and  Father  du  Quen  took  up  their  residence  in  town, 
near  the  chapel  of  Notre  Dame  de  la  Recouvrance,  and  were 
therefore  able  to  perform  early  and  late  mass,  matins  and  vespers, 
as  well  as  to  eatechise  the  children.  These  duties  they  attended 
to  with  so  much  zeal  and  success  that  the  chapel  had  to  be  enlarged 
into  a  church  before  it  was  more  than  a  year  old. 

In  addition  to  the  fifteen  Jesuit  Fathers  and  four  Brothers, 
there  had  arrived  two  secular  priests,  who  had  been  drawn  to  the 
colony  by  family  and  friendly  relations.  Father  Gilles  Nicolet  had 
crossed  the  ocean  to  join  his  lirother  Jean,  the  famous  Indian  in- 
terpreter and  explorer.  Father  Xicolet  devoted  himself  to  the 
spiritual  needs  of  the  habitants  on  Giffard's  seignory  of  Beau- 
port,  and  also  of  those  who  were  sprinkled  along  the   river  as 


Le  Sieur  de  Sillery. 


THE  JESUIT  COLLEGE.  253 

far  as  Cap  Tourmente.  The  other  priect  was  Mons.  Lesueiir,  who 
had  come  out  from  St.  Sauvenr  in  Normandy,  of  which  place 
he  was  cure,  to  join  his  friend  Jean  Bourdon,  whom  we  have  met 
as  the  pyrotechnist  who  made  the  hreworks  which  the  Governor 
himself  set  off  on  the  feast  of  St.  Joseph.  He  was  the  handy  man 
of  the  colony,  ahle  to  build  a  house,  shoe  a  horse,  fire  a  cannon, 
sail  a  ship  and  make  a  chart.  He  certainly  was  a  useful  citizen, 
and  was  rewarded  by  the  grant  in  1637  of  fifty  arpents  of  timber 
land,  covering-  part  of  the  present  St.  John  and  St.  Louis  suburbs 
and  of  the  Plains  of  Abraham. 

When  the  fleet  had  sailed,  and  the  people  been  reduced  to  do- 
mestic subjects  of  interest,  public  attention  must  have  been  concen- 
trated on  the  Jesuit  college.  The  company  had  deeded  to  the  So- 
ciety in  March  twelve  arpents  of  land  not  far  from  the  fort,  and  as 
a  gentleman  of  Picard}-,  Mons.  Rene  Rohault,  had  bequeathed  to 
the  society  his  whole  patrimony,  and  as  his  father,  the  Marquis 
de  Gamache,  had  forestalled  their  enjoyment  of  this  inheritance 
by  a  gift  of  sixteen  thousand  ecus,  the  society  was  warranted  in 
making  its  plans  on  an  extensive  scale  and  erecting  a  substantial 
building.  Nothing  is  more  expressive  of  the  unflinching  faith  of 
the  Church  in  its  growth  and  permanency  than  the  size  and 
strength  of  its  buildings,  which  are  usually  designed  for  a  popu- 
lation of  thrice  the  existing  number.  The  Jesuit  college  was  an 
illustration  of  this,  for  it  was  laid  out  on  a  scale  which  nothing, 
either  in  the  actual  condition  or  immediate  prospects  of  the  col- 
ony, seemed  to  justify. 

The  only  other  important  structure  under  erection  near  Quebec 
this  autimm  was  also  due  to  Jesuit  enterprise.  Father  le  Jeune's 
letter  had  reiterated  his  belief  that  the  acceptance  of  Christianity 
by  the  natives  would  he  accomplished  only  by  inducing  them  to 
abandon  their  roving  habits  and  engage  in  sedentary  occupation. 
The  Chevalier,  Noel  Brulard  de  Sillery,  a  Knight  of  Malta,  was 
moved  by  the  eloquent  appeals  and  arguments  of  the  Relations 
to  found  a  mission,  where  Indians  would  be  induced  to  settle  and 
learn  farming  and  other  useful  handicrafts.  The  Father  se- 
lected as  a  site  a  deep  indentation  in  the  rocky  barrier  which  con- 
fines the  north  shore  of  the  river  about  a  league  above  the  hahita- 


254  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

tion.  There  a  small  meadow  could  be  cleared  for  cultivation  un- 
der the  protection  of  a  fort  on  the  overhanging  cliffs.  The  site,  as 
it  happened,  had  already  been  selected  for  his  own  use  by  Mons- 
Francois  de  Re,  more  commonly  known  as  Mons.  Gand,  a  large 
shareholder  in  the  company,  who  himself  resided  in  Canada. 
He,  however,  relinquished  his  rights  without  hesitation  in  favor  of 
the  earnest  philanthropist;  and  the  Jesuits  at  once  commenced 
erecting  the  mission  of  St.  Joseph,  which  ere  long  came  to  be 
known  by  the  name  of  the  benefactor,  as  the  Mission  of  Sillery. 
He,  though  averse  to  notoriety,  was  unable  to  hide  his  good  deed. 
In  the  spring  of  1638,  the  mission  house  was  opened  and 
twenty  Indians  at  once  camped  around  it.  Thus  commenced  a 
native  settlement  which  was  to  be  hallowed  by  many  an  act  of 
devotion  and  deed  of  suffering,  till  abandoned  from  dread  of  the 
Iroquois  in  165 1.  A  stone  building  still  stands  on  the  beach  sup- 
posed to  be  the  original  mission  house.  In  all  its  architectural 
features  it  is  a  type  of  the  country  house  still  erected  by  the 
French  habitant.  Sillery  is  therefore  deeply  interesting  as  the 
site  of  the  first  attempt  made  with  the  set  purpose  of  wean- 
ing the  Indian  from  his  roving  life,  and  teaching  him  habits  of 
steady  work  and  patient  industry.  In  those  early  days  the  white 
society  of  Quebec  undoubtedly  approached  nearer  to  a  Chris- 
tian standard  than  most  of  our  frontier  towns  do  to-day ; 
nevertheless  the  Indian  settlements,  so  earnestly  made  and  so  sed- 
ulously watched  over  by  the  Jesuit  fathers,  exercised  almost  no 
attraction  on  the  tribes  at  large.  From  that  point  of  view  they 
must  be  pronounced  failures ;  and  in  other  respects  they  must 
sorely  have  tried  the  patience  of  the  French. 

Of  the  power  of  habit  and  the  hopelessness  of  changing  sud- 
denly the  whole  current  of  an  Indian's  family  and  tribal  life, 
bound  as  he  was  to  it  by  the  most  sacred  traditions  as  well  as  by 
self-interest,  the  Fathers  had  painful  experience  in  their  Huron 
College  of  Notre  Dame  des  Anges.  The  new  pupils  soon  com- 
menced to  fret  under  the  restraints  imposed  on  them,  and  the  (iis- 
content  extended  even  to  the  old  scholars.  The  only  relief  was 
in  escape,  and  this  the  Indian  boys  contrived  with  such  ingenuity 
that  all  but  two  had  paddled  away,  with  ample  provisions,  before 


AN    ECCLESIASTICAL    CLLEBKATJDN.  255 

iiieir  design  was  even  suspected.  The  college  was  therefore  re- 
duced to  two  scholars,  but  these  were  so  thoroughly  reliable  that 
they  were  entrusted  by  the  Governor  with  a  delicate  mission.  All 
winter  long  the  little  town  had  been  harassed  by  anxiety  as 
to  the  safety  of  their  countrymen,  lay  and  clerical,  resident 
among  the  Hurons.  The  tribes  in  the  neighborhood  were 
restless.  They  were  known  to  be  greatly  exercised  over 
the  epidemic  of  small-pox  and  other  ailments,  attributed  by  them 
to  the  machinations  of  the  French.  They  were  also  irritated  at 
the  refusal  of  the  French,  who  professed  to  be  their  allies, 
to  follow  and  punish  the  Iroquois.  It  was  feared,  there- 
fore, that  they  might,  during  the  winter,  if  the  disease  con- 
tinued virulent,  attack  in  numbers  and  massacre  the  scanty  white 
population.  The  Governor  was  desirous  to  assure  the  Indians 
that  such  an  attempt  would  fail,  but  that,  if  made  by  any  reckless 
bands,  the  crime  would  be  more  or  less  condoned,  and  the  whole 
nation  would  not  be  made  to  suffer.  The  hostility  of  the  Hurons 
meant  the  absolute  failure  of  the  commercial  company.  They 
w^ere  its  best  customers,  and  should  their  defection  be  followed  by 
an  alliance  with  their  kindred,  the  Iroquois  confederacy,  the  very 
existence  of  the  colony  might  be  imperilled.  To  pacify  them  the 
two  Huron  scholars  were  sent  as  ambassadors,  for  to  have  des- 
patched one  or  more  Frenchmen  alone,  on  such  a  mission,  might 
simply  have  aggravated  the  peril.  To  strengthen  the  mission,  a 
French  trader,  one  of  their  reverend  instructors,  and  some  Al- 
gonquins  as  guides  accompanied  the  boys.  After  many  an  ad- 
venture and  thirty-six  days'  incessant  voyaging  between  Montreal 
and  the  Georgian  Ba>-,  they  reached  the  Huron  bourgade  to  find 
all  well. 

To  secure  and  cement  the  attachment  of  the  Montagnais  and 
Algonquins  in  the  neighborhood  of  Quebec,  they  were  always 
invited  to  take  part  in  public  ceremonies,  and  even  in  re- 
ligious functions,  where  their  paint  and  feathers  made  an 
effective  contrast  with  the  sombre  robes  of  the  priests.  "On 
the  feast  of  the  glorious  Assumption  of  the  Virgin  the  oc- 
cupants of  four  of  the  Indian  lodges,  w^lio  were  seeking 
Christian    instruction,    assembled    at    the    mission    to    assist    in 


256  QUEBEC  IX  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

the  procession,  which  was  organized  in  honor  of  that  glorious 
princess,  the  protector  of  New  as  well  as  of  Old  France.  His  ex- 
cellency, the  Governor,  omitted  no  accessory  which  could  add  to 
the  magnificence  of  the  procession.  It  was  a  glorious  sight  to  see 
a  band  of  savages  march  two  by  two  in  perfect  order,  clad  in  their 
gaudy  costumes,  and  following  the  French.  The  cortege  moved 
between  files  of  soldiery.  The  rattle  of  musketry  and  the  roar  of 
cannon  fired  from  the  ships  and  the  battery,  excited  in  every 
bosom  the  keenest  joy,  profound  devotion  and  ardent  thankful- 
ness to  that  God  who  was  thus  bringing  to  fruition  the  designs 
of  our  great  king,  in  the  salvation  of  this  benighted  people.  To 
add  to  our  rejoicing  their  Indian  jugglers  (medicine  men) 
brought  five  of  their  drums  which  they  had  used  in  their  heathen 
incantations,  and  protested,  by  depositing  them  with  us,  that  they 
thus  abandoned  the  worship  of  Belial  and  would  henceforth  serve 
only  Jesus  Christ."  The  sincere  devotion  expressed  in  these 
ceremonies  by  the  head  of  the  colony,  the  clergy,  and  the 
people  need  not  be  doubted  because  of  a  tincture  of  exaggeration 
which  colors  the  description  of  it  in  the  Relations.  This  pro- 
found religious  fervor  not  only  influenced  deeply  the  people  of 
the  early  colony,  but  made  so  indelible  an  impression  on  the 
French-Canadian  character  that  nearly  three  centuries  of  subse- 
quent history,  including  a  century  and  a  half  of  contact  with  an 
alien  race  of  a  differing  creed,  have  but  slightly  diminished  its 
force. 

The  influence  of  Father  le  Jeune's  Relations  was  demonstrated 
in  1639  by  most  palpable  results.  They  had  the  effect  of  endowing 
Canada  with  two  of  the  most  beneficial  organizations  of  the 
church.  There  may  be  a  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the  reflex  in- 
fluence on  mankind  of  prayers  and  of  "perpetual  adoration"  by 
cloistered  recluses,  male  or  female.  But  no  man  can  withhold  his 
admiration  from  the  religious  devotion  and  self-abnegation  ex- 
pressed in  gratuitously  tending  the  sick  and  educating  the  ignor- 
ant ;  nor  should  this  admiration  be  denied  to  devotees,  who,  by  tak- 
ing the  vows,  and  assuming  the  habit,  of  a  religious  order, 
bind  themselves  yet  more  effectually  to  forego  the  pleasures 
and     ordinary    occupations    of    the     world,     and     to    live    ex- 


FOUNDATION    OF    THE    HOTEL-DIEU.  257 

clusively  and  perpetually  for  others.  We  may  doubt  whether 
nurses  or  teachers  are  best  fitted  for  their  special  vocation  by  ex- 
cluding themselves  from  the  routine  of  social  life,  shutting 
themselves  off  from  general  intercourse  with  their  kind,  re- 
nouncing independence  of  character,  and  repressing  the  natural 
growth  of  their  faculties.  But,  in  the  case  of  teaching  orders, 
their  example,  the  rigid  descipline  they  observe  and  en- 
force, and  the  uniformity  of  the  system  they  follow,  un- 
questionably impress  on  their  pupils  a  unity  of  type  wdiich  tends 
to  create  and  perpetuate  national  distinctiveness.  It  is  unquestion- 
able that  Canada  owes  the  retention  of  her  idiosyncrasies  and  her 
remarkable  homogeneity,  as  much  to  the  clerical  education  of  her 
boys  and  girls,  as  to  the  patriotic  teaching  of  her  secular  clergy. 

The  distressing  stories  of  famine,  as  well  as  all  that  had  been 
told  of  the  superstitious  ignorance  among  the  Indians  had  touched 
many  a  heart  in  France,  but  none  responded  more  ardently  and 
practically  to  the  appeals  of  the  Relations  than  two  women  of 
family:  Marie  de  Vignerod  (Madame  de  Comballet,  Duchess 
d'Aiguillon,  the  niece  of  the  great  Cardinal),  and  Madame 
de  la  Peltrie.  The  Duchess,  like  other  religious  women  of 
the  age,  not  only  looked  on  the  monastic  life  as  the  consum- 
mation of  perfect  piety,  but  had  gc^ie  further  and  actually  as- 
sumed, as  a  novice,  the  garb  of  the  Carmelites.  Her  uncle  is  sup- 
posed to  have  disapproved  of  the  step,  and  it  is  assumed 
that  she  yielded  to  his  controlling  will  and  returned  to  the  world. 
But  whether  that  be  so  or  not,  she  continued  to  be  animated  by 
fervent  zeal,  and  is  said  to  have  sought  advice  from  her  spiritual 
director,  Saint  \'lncent  de  Paul,  as  to  the  best  method  of  carrying 
her  convictions  into  practice.  As  Madame  de  Comballet,  she 
had  corresponded  wdth  Father  le  Jeune  in  1636  on  the  subject  of 
a  hospital  in  Quebec.  The  enterprise  took  shape  the  following 
year  under  her  auspices  and  at  her  charge,  for  she  gave  22,400 
livres  as  an  endowment.  The  temporary  building  had  already 
been  erected  under  the  supervision  of  the  Jesuit  Fathers  on  the 
twelve  acres  granted  her  by  the  company,  when,  in  the  spring  of 
1639,  the  duty  of  filling  this  dangerous  mission,  as  hospital  nurses, 
was  assumed  by  the  Hospitalieres  of  the  Mercy  of  Jesus,  a  com- 


258  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

munity  of  Aiigustinian  Hospital  Nuns  whose  foundation  dates 
back  to  the  twelfth  century.  Three  delicate  women  were  found 
willinf^  to  sacrifice  themselves.  Mere  de  Saint  Ignace,  the 
Mother  Superior,  was  only  twenty-nine  years  old,  and  was  a  suf- 
ferer herself  from  ill  health,  l)Ut  a  woman  of  indomitable  courage 
and  energy.  Her  companions  were  Mere  de  Saint  Bernard,  a 
quiet,  contemplative  woman,  and  Mere  de  Saint  Bonaventure,  a 
gentle  creature  who  had  assumed  the  habit  of  a  nun  at  eighteen 
years  of  age,  and  had  never  left  her  cloister.  If  meekness,  ten- 
derness and  charity  are  the  most  potent  agents  for  influencing 
suffering  and  dying  men,  whether  savage  or  civilized,  these  three 
women,  whose  only  sense  of  strength  came  from  reliance  on  Di- 
\ine  aid,  were  well  equipped  for  their  nol)le  mission. 

But  if  the  need  of  hospital  accommodation  and  good  nursing 
was  being  keenly  felt,  hardly  less  urgent  was  the  need  of  some 
provision  for  female  education,  and  this  also  the  devout  women  of 
France  were  prepared  to  furnish  without  drawing  on  the  com- 
pany in  the  colony  or  in  France.  When  Saint  Angele  at  Bresse, 
in  1537,  was  first  moved  to  erect  an  order  of  women  whose  voca- 
tion should  be  to  relieve  distress  and  teach  the  ignorant,  she  con- 
ceived that  this  ol)ject  could  be  best  accomplished  by  the  members 
living  singly  in  private  houses.  Ere  long,  however,  the  tendency 
towards  association  became  irresistible,  and  her  first  followers 
formed  themselves  into  communities  of  cloistered  nuns,  allied 
to  the  order  of  St.  Augustine,  under  rules  which  did  not 
enforce  absolute  seclusion,  yet  which  permitted  the  fulfil- 
ment of  their  founder's  charitable  objects.  The}^  adopted  the 
name  and  were  inspired  by  the  example  of  the  martyr  virgin  St. 
Ursula.  It  was  not  till  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century 
that,  under  the  instigation  of  Madame  de  Ste.  Beuve,  the  order 
opened  its  convent  doors  to  boarders  seeking  education,  and 
adopted  the  rules  by  which  it  is  still  governed.  The  order  was 
therefore  in  the  first  ardor  of  its  re-creation  when  Madame  de  la 
Peltrie  was  inspired  by  Father  le  Jeune's  glowing  accounts  of  the 
spiritual  receptivity  of  the  Indians  to  devote  her  life  to  the  educa- 
tion of  their  girls.  It  was  by  a  Providential  and  strange  coincidence 
that  slie  was  brought  into  intercourse,  through  Father  Coudran, 


Madame  de  la  Peltrie  (Marie  Madeleine  de  Chauvigny). 


THE   URSULINE   CONVENT.  259 

General  of  the  order,  with  tliat  holy  man  whom  all  Christ- 
ians have  agreed  to  eanonize,  vSt.  Vincent  de  Tanl,  and 
with  another  woman,  fired  by  as  ardent  zeal  as  herself,  though  of  a 
less  explosive  temperament,  Mere  Marie  de  I'lncarnation.  Both 
women  had  mixed  in  good  society,  both  had  been  married,  and 
both,  under  the  fervor  of  devotion,  had  not  only  relinquished  the 
world,  but  had,  in  so  doing,  broken  the  natural  ties  and  oldiga- 
tions  of  family  and  social  life.  Madame  Madeleine  de  Cliau- 
vigny,  as  the  daughter  of  the  Seigneur  of  Vaubougon,  near 
Alengon,  in  Normandy,  had  married  early  in  life  Mons.  dc 
la  Peltrie,  and  had  been  left  a  widow  while  still  in  the 
bloom  of  youth,  with  the  additional  attraction  of  a  large  fortune. 
She  had  suitors  many,  who  were  pressed  upon  her  by  her  father. 
To  rid  herself  of  tlicir  attention  and  the  importunity  of  her  family, 
she  married  a  Mons.  de  Bernieres,  a  man  of  position,  treasurer  of 
France  at  Caen.  It  is  stated  that  both  parties  to  the  contract  agreed 
that  the  marriage  should  be  merely  formal,  and  terminate  with 
the  ceremony.  Mons.  de  Bernieres  was  as  zealously  religious  as  his 
wife,  and  after  they  had  parted  forever,  he,  as  a  business  man,  ad- 
ministered the  affairs  in  France  of  the  Ursuline  Convent  in  Can- 
ada, over  which  his  wife  was  the  secular  head.  Had  they  so  willed, 
they  might  both  have  taken  the  vows  and  assumed  a  religious 
habit;  but  he  thought,  no  doubt  correctly,  that  he  could  further 
liis  wife's  plans,  and  administer  her  estate  more  effectually,  as  a 
layman  than  as  a  monk.  She  being  a  woman  of  unusual  energy, 
felt  that  she  was  a  fitting  counterpart  of  her  mystical  friend,  the 
saintly  Marie  de  I'lncarnation,  and  could  best  attain  the  ol)ject 
they  both  had  in  view  by  remaining  in  the  world,  wdiile  not  of  it. 
Marie  Guyart  had  also  tasted  the  Ijitterness  of  sorrow  and  en- 
joyed the  exhilaration  of  romance.  She  had  married  early,  but, 
after  two  years  of  happiness,  as  Madame  Martin,  was  left  a 
widow  with  an  only  child.  For  twelve  years  she  devoted  herself 
to  the  care  and  education  of  her  boy.  Then  the  call  to  forsake  all, 
even  her  offspring,  became  overpowering  and  she  yielded.  She 
entered  the  Ursuline  Convent  at  Tours,  and  henceforward  ex- 
emplified that  mysterious  state  of  self-abnegation  and  absorption 
in  a  dominant  idea  or  passion,  which  St.  Paul  expresses  in  the 


260  QUEBEC  IN    THE  SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

verse:  "Henceforth  I  live,  yet  not  I,  but  Christ  liveth  in  me."  In 
visions  she  beheved  herself  divinely  called  to  live  and  die  in  Can- 
ada ;  and  when,  years  afterwards,  Aladanie  de  la  Peltrie  came  to 
Tours  to  seek  the  advice  of  Father  Ponat  as  to  the  manner  in 
which  she  could  best  fulfill  her  missionary  purpose,  Marie  de  I'ln- 
carnation  at  once  recojjnizcd  in  her  the  companion  with  whom  she 
had,  in  her  dreams,  trodden  the  longed-for  wilderness  of  that  re- 
pellent and  yet  attractive  savage  land.  On  the  other  hand,  Ma- 
dame de  la  Peltrie  saw  in  the  devout,  contemplative,  but  yet 
courageous  nun  the  very  woman  who  would  face  danger  without 
flinching,  and  wrench  success  from  failure  and  disappointment, 
as  the  superior  of  her  convent  in  the  New  World.  All  the  nuns 
of  Tours  were  eager  to  enlist  for  this  missionary  enterprise,  but 
one  only  was  chosen,  Marie  de  la  Troche  de  St.  Bernard,  who 
was  selected,  not  because  she  was  the  most  robust,  but  by  reason 
of  her  gentle,  winning  ways  and  devout  enthusiasm.  Before 
sailing  from  Dieppe,  Mother  Cecile  Richer  de  la  Croix  was  per- 
mitted to  join  this  little  band  of  the  first  female  missionaries  who 
ever  sailed  away  from  a  Christian  land  with  no  other  motive  than 
to  carry  the  gospel  and  exemplify  the  Master's  teaching  to  the 
heathen. 

Looking  back  on  it,  the  age  seems  to  us  one  full  of  contradic- 
tion. Vice  abounded,  but  grace  did  certainly  in  some  places  much 
more  abound ;  yet  they  were  in  such  close  fellowship  that  it  is  ex- 
tremely difficult  to  dissociate  them.  So  obscured  was  the  virtue  of 
religious  zeal  by  the  reprehensible  methods  of  attaining  holy 
ends,  that  one  wonders  how  any  moral  standard  could  be  main- 
tained. Madame  de  la  Peltrie's  fictitious  marriage  to  deceive  her 
father  is  cited  as  an  act  of  piety,  and  Madame  Martin's  neglect  of 
her  son  in  the  ardent  desire  to  assume  the  habit  of  a  nun  is  ac- 
counted worthy  of  all  imitation.  Religious  eccentricity  has  not  been 
confined  to  one  age,  or  to  the  advocates  of  any  one  creed ;  but  it 
certainly  assumes  some  of  its  most  extrem^e  phases  in  periods  of 
vivid  religious  revival,  when  fervid  devotion,  which  may  at  any 
time  become  morbid  under  the  stimulus  of  imagination,  arrays  it- 
self for  spiritual  conflict. 

On  the  4th  of  May,  1639,  the  good  ship  "St.  Joseph"  was  ready 


>  *. 


LA-MEREMARm  J)E  L'lNCART^^  JTIO.^- 
j  Premiere  Jtipcr/>ur-e  dcs  I  'rjiUine^r  dc  la.  nottveUe. 
\rj'ancf.'c{cyeii^£ aQuchecen  odeia- dcJainJete'lc  '  . 
)ficrmef  four  dm  -ri 1 1/^72-  riac^  de  Z^ji^fyrfi'mnj_s:^  '  ■■' 


MliliilillillliMilliliilllliliM^^ 


iiiiijiiaiif,! 


\ 

L 


^.:  i-Y'^,  A- '^: 


<«?  j".\ 


LA  VIE 

DE     LA 

•  MERE  MARIE 

D     E 

L'lN  CAR  NATION, 

Injlitutrice  (^. premiere Superieuredes  *Vrfu^ 
lines  de  la  Npu'vdU  frdiisc^ 

A    PARIS,  ^- 

Chc2  Ant.  Claude  Brfasson  \  Hw  $afnt" 

Jac<jucs ,  pr^s  la  Fontaine  S.  Scvf rirt  , 

^  la  Science. 


M.  DCC.   XXIV.       X 


ARRIVAL  OF  THE   NUNS.  26I 

to  put  to  sea  from  the  port  of  Dieppe,  and  on  it  embarked  as  earn- 
est a  group  of  Christians  as  those  who  had  sailed  from  Plymouth 
in  the  Mayllower,  nineteen  years  before.  The  energetic  Madame  de 
la  Peltrie,  three  nursing  nuns  from  the  hospital  at  Dieppe,  three 
teaching  nuns  of  the  Order  of  St.  Ursule,  and  the  three  Jesuit 
Fathers,  Vimont,  Poncet  and  Chaumont,  looked  at  life  and  their 
duties  as  Christians  from  a  point  of  view  so  diametrically  opposite 
to  that  of  the  Pilgrims,  that  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  how  two 
groups  of  intelligent  men  and  women  could  possibly  put  such  con- 
trary interpretations  on  the  teachings  of  the  same  Master.  Both 
recognized  his  authority  as  absolute,  both  accepted  his  words  as 
the  law  of  their  lives,  and  yet  how^  widely  divergent  were  the  paths 
which  they  followed ! 

It  was  midsummer  before  the  ship  arrived  at  Tadousac,  where 
they  transhipped  to  a  schooner,  and  so  went  on  to  Quebec.  Unable 
to  reach  the  port  before  nightfall,  they  camped  on  the  Island  of 
Orleans,  whence  news  of  their  coming  preceded  them.  The  Gover- 
nor, his  suite,  all  the  inhabitants,  and  a  group  of  Indians  were  at 
the  Citl  de  Sac  to  bid  them  welcome,  and  we  can  well  believe  that, 
in  the  ecstasy  of  their  emotions,  the  nuns  fell  on  their  knees  and 
kissed  the  very  ground  of  their  adopted  country.  To  climb  the  hill 
and  return  thanks  in  the  little  chapel  of  Notre  Dame  de  la  Recon- 
vrance  was  their  first  duty.  The  rest  of  the  day  may  have  been 
spent  in  treading  the  forest  paths  and  visiting  the  building  which 
the  Jesuits  were  putting  up  for  the  HospitaUh-es,  a  humble  house 
on  the  cliff,  overlooking  the  St.  Charles ;  and  the  sheltered  site 
which  had  been  selected  for  the  convent  of  the  Ursulines,  under 
the  hill  which  rose  steeply  to  its  crest,  then  covered  with  forest, 
now  crowned  by  the  citadel.  It  did  not  consume  much  time  to  ar- 
range their  scanty  wardrobes  and  the  still  scantier  furniture  in  the 
temporary  wooden  building  assigned  to  them.  Before  all  else  they 
were  anxious  to  see  the  Indians  whom  they  expected  to  be  their 
special  charge.  The  next  day,  accordingly,  they  were  taken  in  a 
schooner  to  Sillery.  They  found  there  the  little  circle  of  Indian 
huts  grouped  around  the  church,  the  priest's  house  and  the  in- 
firmary, all  surrounded  l)y  a  wooden  palisade.  The  Indians  were 
accustomed  to  the  black-robed  priests,  but  these  strangely  clad 


262  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

women  at  first  fi-i<jlitcnecl  thcni.*  A  band  of  Indians  and 
sqnaws  excites  the  curiosity  of  white  men,  even  to-day, 
after  the  white  race  has  hved  in  contact  with  the  red  for 
four  centuries.  At  that  moment  they  were  invested  with 
a  mysterious  charm,  and  the  possibihty  of  raising  them 
through  Christian  teaching  and  kindness  out  of  savagery  to 
civihzation  gave  to  them  in  the  eyes  of  these  zealous  mission- 
aries an  ahnost  sacred  aspect.  The  Hospitalilres  would  have  been 
depressed  could  they  have  foreseen  how  few  Indians  their  hospital 
wards  were,  after  a  few  years,  to  receive ;  and  Madame  de  la  Pel- 
trie  would  hardly  have  believed  it  possible  that  the  training  and 
the  careful  nurturing,  which  her  sisters  were  about  to  ofifer  so 
freely  to  the  Indian  girls,  would  fail  to  attract  them.  The  regi- 
men of  the  Jesuit  schools,  though  comparatively  lax,  had  driven 
away  their  pupils.  This  might  have  warned  Madame  de  la  Peltrie 
that  the  close  confinement  of  a  convent  would  prove  intolerable  to 
the  forest-loving  Indian  girl. 

But  full  of  hope  and  faith,  the  Hospital  and  the  Ursuline  Nuns 
were  now  to  part,  after  three  months  of  intimate  intercourse,  to 
take  up  each  their  appointed  work.  Till  their  hospital  was  fin- 
ished, the  Grey  Nuns  were  provided  with  a  house  near  the  Fort, 
and  the  Ursulines  opened  their  school,  and  resumed  the  routine  of 
their  cloistered  life,  with  six  pupils,  in  a  house  in  the  Lower  Town, 
near  the  landing  place,  adjacent  to  the  old  Recollet  chapel  and  the 
Company's  old  store.  There  the  Indians  camped  and  chiefly  con- 
gregated;  and  by  opening  their  school  in  that  neighborhood, 
the  nuns  expected  to  attract  to  it  the  girls  whose  hearts  they 
were  so  devoutly  set  on  winning  from  barbarism  and  the  devil 
to  the  worship  of  Jesus  and  his  Mother,  by  the  exhibition  of  the 
comforts  which  their  convent  presented,  and  by  the  charm  of  their 
singing  and  their  attractive  form  of  worship. 

"  The  Hospifalihrs  did  not  assume  their  official  costume  as  Grey  Nuns  till 
they  entered  their  convent. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

The  Foundation  of  Ville  Marie  as  a  Rival  to  Quebec, 
and  the  Breaking  Out  of  the  Iroquois  War. 

The  ships  that  brought  out  the  nuns  carried  also  the  tidings 
of  the  birth  of  tlic  Dauphin,  the  long-prayed-for  heir  to  Louis 
XIII. 's  throne,  the  Dieudonne  Louis  XIV.,  who  was  to  take  so 
deep  an  interest  in  the  colony,  but  to  govern  it  under  a  more  bu- 
reaucratic system  than  even  the  great  Cardinal  himself  might  have 
approved.  There  was  great  rejoicing  in  the  colony.  The  event 
was  celebrated  by  a  procession  to  the  chapel,  where  thanks  were 
rendered  to  the  accompaniment  of  cannon  and  musketry.  The  most 
notable  feature  in  the  procession  .was  six  Indians  dressed  in  finery, 
which  had  been  sent  out  to  Canada  by  the  King  on  the  occasion  of 
the  presentation  to  him  of  a  young  savage  the  previous  year.  This 
youth  was  one  of  the  six ;  two  others  were  relatives  of  his ;  the  re- 
maining three  had  been  selected  as  representatives  of  the  great 
racial  divisions  recognized  by  the  French — a  Christianized  Huron, 
an  Algonquin,  a  Montagnais.  They  bore  their  honors  as  though 
to  the  manner  born,  and  headed  the  procession  to  the  church ; 
thence  they  marched  to  the  hospital  recently  opened,  in  the 
chapel  of  which  there  was  another  service  of  thanksgiving,  and 
then  returned  to  the  Fort.  For  this  thanksgiving  service  was 
celebrated  on  the  Feast  of  the  Assumption  of  the  Virgin,  August 
15,  and  therefore  fifteen  days  after  the  landing  of  the  nuns,  who 
with  their  pupils  sang  the  exordium.  The  day  terminated  with 
feasting  and  speech  making  and  a  display  of  fireworks. 

While  the  picturesque  worship,  with  its  seductive  music  and 
mysterious  symbolism,  delighted  the  Indians,  their  attachment  to 
the  French  must  have  been  further  strengthened  by  the  care  for 
the  bodies  in  the  hour  of  sickness  so  tenderly  exercised  by  the 
Sisters  at  the  Hotel  Dicu.  Though  the  teaching  nuns,  the  Ur- 
snlines,  were  not  encumbered  with  over  many  pupils,  the  nursing 


264  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY, 

ones  found  their  hospital  at  once  tilled  with  more  than  they  could 
make  proper  provision  for.  To  induce  the  Indians  to  adopt  a 
sedentary  mode  of  life,  the  company  offered  a  grant  of  cleared 
land  as  a  dower  to  every  Indian  girl  on  her  marriage,  provided  she 
and  her  husband  would  settle  upon  it.  Not  many  appear  to  have 
availed  themselves  of  the  offer.  It  is  recorded  that  a  member  of  the 
company  gave  100  ecus  to  the  Jesuit  College  for  Indian  boys, 
while  another  gave  100  ecus  to  an  Indian  girl  on  her  marriage  to 
a  Frenchman.  From  Champlain's  time,  intermarriage  of  French- 
men with  Indian  girls  was  not  only  sanctioned  but  encouraged 
by  the  Church  and  by  the  company.  The  custom  affords  another 
point  of  contrast  between  New  France  and  New  England.  All 
these  influences  comljined  to  strengthen  the  ties  which  bound  the 
Indians  to  the  French,  and  to  increase  the  number  of  converts. 
Had  it  not  been  for  the  unfortunate  hostility  of  the  Iroquois,  the 
laudable  efforts  of  the  Church  and  the  company  to  elevate  and 
Christianize  the  aborigines  within  the  sphere  of  their  influence, 
might  have  met  with  as  nuich  success  as  the  labors  of  the  Spanish 
Church  among  the  Pueblos  of  the  Rio  Grande,  or  those  of  the 
Franciscan  Monks  in  California. 

Of  religious  zeal  there  was  an  abundance,  yet  the  colony 
did  not  grow.  Some  seventeen  seignories  were  granted  prior  to 
1640,  and  absolute  grants  of  land  were  made  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Quebec  and  Three  Rivers ;  but  it  was  hard  to  get  people  to 
come  and  cultivate  them.  One  or  two  energetic  residents  like  Gif- 
fard  did  induce  a  few  peasants  from  Normandy  to  settle  on  the 
rich  bottom  lands  of  the  Beauport  Flats ;  but  such  efforts  were 
exceptional.  Cheffault,  the  most  influential  member  of  the  aux- 
iliary company,  was  perhaps  entitled  to  the  best  lands  in  the  coun- 
try, which  he  obtained  when  the  Seignory  of  Beaupre  was  con- 
ceded to  him  ;  and  Jacques  Castillon,  another  shareholder,  might 
show  some  reason  for  claiming  the  Island  of  Orleans ;  but  as  both 
were  traders  neither  was  in  a  position  to  fulfill  the  first  duty  of  a 
scig)iciir — namely,  to  encourage  the  toil  of  the  colonists  by  per- 
sonal participation  in  the  arduous  task  of  opening  up  the  wilder- 
ness. Three  extensive  grants  were  made  to  the  Jesuits,  with  the 
ostensible  object  of  enabling  them  to  form  settlements  on  which 


DIFFICULTIES  OF  THE  NEW  COMPANY.  265 

the  Indians  might  he  taught  agricuhure.  Had  the  plan  suc- 
ceeded, close  familiarity  hetween  the  Indian  and  the  Frenchman 
would  not  have  proved  conducive  to  industrious  habits  on  the 
part  of  the  latter.  The  Duchess  d'Aiguillon.  it  may  he  assumed, 
ceded  her  seignory,  the  fief  of  Grondines  and  the  thirty  acres 
within  the  banlieu  of  Quebec,  to  the  Hotel  Dieu.  Still  others  of 
\those  early  grants  were  made  to  absentee  stockholders — one  cover- 
jing  a  large  tract  on  the  south  shore,  opposite  Quebec,  being  given 
to  Le  Maistre,  a  shareholder,  as  attorney  for  de  Lauzon,  the  In- 
tendant  of  the  company.  Even  had  the  seignorial  system  been  well 
adapted  to  encourage  the  immigration  of  actual  farmers,  the  sys- 
tem must  have  failed  under  such  leaders.  In  truth  all  the  influences 
at  work  deterred  rather  than  encouraged  active  settlement.  The 
colony  was  governed  by  a  military  knight  who  had  taken  religi- 
ous vows.  The  Jesuits,  who  were  his  trusted  advisers,  had  re- 
duced the  colony  as  nearly  as  possible  to  the  status  of  a  theocracy, 
and  all  private  enterprise  was  strangled  by  the  commercial  com- 
pany, whose  interest  was  to  retard  rather  than  to  promote  coloniza- 
tion. Their  professions  of  zeal  in  the  matter,  to  judge  by  the  facts, 
were  quite  as  hollow  as  those  of  their  heretical  predecessors. 

At  this  date,  when  the  population  of  the  whole  colony  did  not 
exceed  two  hundred,  the  Virginian  colony,  which  had  been  in  ex- 
istence just  about  the  same  length  of  time,  had  attracted  a  popula- 
tion of  15,000,  while  the  New  England  colony  numbered  some 
26,000.    Boston  was  a  thriving  town  with  a  printing  press. 

When  a  trading  company  undertakes  the  functions  of  govern- 
ment, there  are  so  many  drains  on  its  treasury  of  an  un])roductive 
character,  and  it  has  to  disburse  so  much  in  protecting  its  priv- 
ileges, that  its  gains  must  be  enormous  if  business  is  to  be 
carried  on  at  a  profit.  The  French  company,  as  we  have  seen,  set 
out  on  its  active  career  burdened  with  debt,  and  embarrassed  by  an 
auxiliary  mortgage  company.  Nevertheless,  for  three  or  four 
years  subsequent  to  1633,  when  de  Caen's  monopoly  expired,  it 
made  money.  But  the  bold  attack  of  the  Iroquois  on  the  Hurons 
under  the  very  guns  of  the  post  of  Three  Rivers  in  1636, 
checked  the  current  of  the  fur  trade  from  the  Lakes.  The 
arrangement  of  the  original  company  with  the  auxiliary  one  ex- 


266  yUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTPI  CENTURY. 

pired  in  1637,  the  year  after  the  breaking  out  of  hostiHties. 
The  profits  earned  had  amounted  to  60,000  Hvres,  after  pay- 
ing to  de  Caen  and  others  certain  judgments  amounting  to  some 
75,000  Hvres.  The  partnership  was  renewed  for  another  period 
of  four  years.  But  the  second  term  was  as  disastrous  as  the  first 
had  been  successful,  for  at  its  close  the  company  owed  the 
auxiliary  company  70,464  livres.  Confidence  had  hardly  been  re- 
stored in  the  hearts  of  the  Huron  and  Algonquin  allies  of 
the  French,  when  the  audacious  seizure  of  two  Frenchmen 
near  Three  Rivers,  in  the  winter  of  1640-1641,  and  the  cir- 
cumstances of  their  surrender  in  the  sununer  of  1641,  demon- 
strated the  helplessness  of  the  French  company  to  maintain  a  safe 
highway  for  their  traders.  The  incident  threw  the  Quebec 
community  into  greater  excitement  than  it  had  knowai  since 
so  many  of  its  prominent  men  had  hurried  up  the  river  in  1637, 
to  repel  the  same  ubiquitous  and  elusive  foe.  It  happened  in  this 
wise.  Two  Frenchmen,  Francois  Marguerie  and  Thomas  Gode- 
froy,  the  latter  a  man  of  note  who  some  years  before  had  been 
granted  a  seignory  opposite  Three  Rivers,  were  hunting  on  snow- 
shoes  near  Three  Rivers  when  they  were  surprised  and  captured 
by  a  band  of  Iroquois.  They  were  carried  off  unharmed  to  a  Mo- 
hawk village,  where  they  were  treated  with  great  consideration. 
When  they  w^re  in  want  of  clothing  their  Indian  captors 
obtained  garments  for  them  from  the  Dutch  at  the  neigh- 
boring settlement  of  Fort  Orange,  and  in  April  they  set  off 
on  a  return  journey  in  company  with  some  50  savages,  part  of 
whom  left  the  main  body  to  molest  the  Lake  and  Ottawa  Indians 
on  their  way  down  to  the  trading  post  of  Three  Rivers, 
while  the  rest  descended  the  river  with  their  hostages.  On 
the  6th  of  Jmie,  more  than  twenty  canoes  filled  with  sav- 
ages appeared  before  Three  Rivers.  An  Algonquin  who  ventured 
out  was  captured.  Then  a  single  canoe,  paddled,  it  was  thought, 
bv  one  of  the  Indians,  appeared  with  a  flag  of  truce.  As  it 
approached  the  man  was  seen  to  l)e  Frangois  Marguerie.  He  said 
that  the  Indians  wished  for  the  friendship  of  the  French,  that  500 
had  left  the  village  and  300  were  on  the  river,  and  that  they  had 
amongst  them  thirty  arquebuses.    Montmagny,  whose  name  trans- 


THE  IROQUOIS  PROPOSE  AN   ALLIANCE.  267 

lated  into  the  Indian  tongue  was  "Onon-tio,"  a  designation 
henceforth  given  to  all  French  Governors,  was  notified  with  all 
haste,  and  came  up  with  a  bark  and  four  shallops.  The  wind  be- 
ing contrary,  he  went  ahead  in  his  rowboat.  There  was  a  solemn 
pow-wow  with  exchange  of  presents,  and  the  two  Frenchmen 
were  liberated  with  proper  tlicatrical  accompaniments,  their  bonds 
cut  asunder,  and  the  ropes  thrown  into  the  river. 

The  Iroquois  pleaded  for  an  alliance,  expressing  their 
preference  for  the  French  over  the  P2nglish  or  the  Dutch, 
and  offering  to  live  pcaceal)ly  with  the  Montagnais  and 
the  Algonquins ;  but  when  asked,  as  a  pledge  of  their  promise,  to 
liberate  an  Algonquin  prisoner,  they  asked  for  time  to  deliberate, 
and  demanded  in  return,  in  addition  to  the  presents  they  had  al- 
ready received,  a  gift  of  firearms,  though  they  were  already  sup- 
plied with  a  number  of  arquebuses.  The  priests  strongly  advised 
the  Governor  to  decline  the  alliance,  believing  the  negotiations  to 
be  insincere,  and  that  the  sole  purpose  was  to  create  dissension  be- 
tween the  French  and  their  allies.  The  Governor  returned 
to  his  boats,  and,  as  an  expressive  way  of  signifying  his 
decision,  began  firing  on  their  camp.  In  return  the  thirty 
arquebuses  kept  up  a  fusilade  on  the  boats,  while  the  main 
body  noiselessly  transported  their  canoes  and  equipment  to  a  part 
of  the  river  whence  they  could  escape  without  detection.  They 
hovered  about  Lake  St.  Peter  and  captured  some  descending 
Hurons,  but  had  vanished  before  the  arrival  of  the  reinforcements 
ordered  from  Quebec,  consisting  of  four  canoes  full  of  armed  men 
under  the  guidance  of  Christian  Indians  from  St.  Joseph,  Sillery. 

That  the  action  of  the  Iroquois  in  seeking  an  alliance,  was  a 
mere  ruse  to  entrap  the  Montagnais  and  the  Algonquins  on  their 
approach  to  Three  Rivers,  may  be  doubted.  Their  policy  was 
probably  more  far-reaching.  The  peace  between  their  Indian 
enemies  on  the  Fludson  and  Long  Island,  and  the  Dutch,  had  been 
broken  by  the  unwise  policy  of  Kieft,  the  Governor  of  New  Neth- 
erlands, and  the  Five  Nations  were  preparing  to  take  advantage  of 
the  situation  to  ravage  the  country  of  those  weak  tribes.  They  had 
always  considered  it  a  grievance  that  the  Dutch,  who  were  their 
close  allies  and  best  customers,  would  not  make  enemies  of  their 


268  QUEBEC   IN    rHE  SEN'ENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

enemies  among  the  native  tribes,  after  the  manner  of  the  French, 
who,  having  made  alhancc  with  the  Algonquins  and  Hurons,  had 
at  once  esponsed  their  quarrels,  as  tliey,  the  Iroquois,  knew  to  their 
cost.  They  may  have  imagined  that,  as  the  Dutch  were  on  the 
eve  of  hostihties  witli  a  branch  of  the  Huron  nation,  it  might  be 
possible  to  persuade  the  French,  as  well  as  the  Dutch,  to  become 
their  friends,  and  thus  cause  all  assistance  to  be  withdrawn  from 
their  hereditary  foes.  With  the  aid  of  the  Europeans,  or  simply 
with  their  neutrality,  they  could  crush  the  continent  into  sub- 
mission, reduce  all  the  members  of  the  great  Algonquin  fam- 
ily to  the  position  of  subject  tribes,  and  relieve  the  trade 
of  both  European  competitors  from  the  risks  and  uncertain- 
ty which  this  interminable  war  created.  These  brave  and 
merciless  warriors  and  skilful  tacticians  were,  as  politicians, 
astute  and  far  seeing.  They  held  the  balance  of  power  on 
the  continent  for  nearly  a  century  and  a  half,  and  it  would 
not  therefore  be  inconsistent  with  their  character  and  polic^y 
to  suppose  that  they  imagined  they  could  use  the  motive  of 
self-interest  to  wean  their  European  neighbors  from  extending 
sympathy  and  aid  to  their  enemy.  But  whatever  their  object, 
their  overtures  were  refused,  with  the  result  that  the  fur  trade  be- 
tween the  Upper  Lakes  and  the  Ottawa  and  the  French  posts  was 
seriously  fettered ;  in  fact,  it  never  again  prospered,  and  the  decay 
reached  to  Quebec.  Meanwhile,  though  the  Iroquois  did  not  yet 
terrorize  the  Montagnais  of  the  Saguenay  district,  there  was  an- 
other source  of  anxiety  in  that  direction,  as  it  was  impossible  to 
watch  and  defend  the  wide  expanse  of  the  Gulf,  a  true  inland  sea, 
against  poachers,  who  were  drafted  in  part  from  the  discontented 
traders  of  Normandy  and  Brittany,  and  in  part  from  the 
hostile  merchants  and  skippers  of  Devonshire  and  Bristol.  Be- 
tween the  Iroquois  on  the  one  hand  and  the  marauders  on  the 
other,  the  trade  of  the  company  languished,  its  profits  waned, 
and  the  colony,  which  was  to  have  shared  its  prosperity,  felt  all 
the  effects  of  its  ill  fortune. 

The  ecclesiastical  history  of  the  colony  seems  during  this  pe- 
riod to  stand  out  in  undue  proportion  to  its  civil  and  political 
development — perhaps  because  neither  the  Governor  nor  the  agents 


ECCLKStASTICAL    ACTINITV.  269 

of  the  company  could  tell  the  story  of  their  doings  with  the 
literary  skill  displayed  by  Father  Ic  Jeunc  when  narrating  the  toils 
and  triumphs  of  the  Church.  That  excellent  man  and  interesting 
writer  was  relieved  by  Father  Vimont  as  Superior  of  the  Jesuits 
in  1639,  but  he  was  considerately  asked  to  prepare  the  Relation 
for  1640.  In  1640  more  nursing  nuns  arrived  from  the  Maison 
de  Misericorde  of  Dieppe,  but  their  number  was  soon  to  be  re- 
duced by  the  death  of  the  gentle,  delicate  Mere  Ste.  Marie.  A 
branch  of  the  Hotel  Dieu  Hospital  was  also  estaiilished  at  Sillery, 
where  the  colony  of  sedentary  Indians  was  growing  so  fast  as  to 
excite  the  keenest  hopes  of  success  in  the  work  of  weaning  the 
converted  natives  from  their  indolent  and  roving  habits.  The 
opening  of  the  hospital  at  Sillery  made  it  possible  to  turn  over  part 
of  their  scanty  accommodation  in  Quebec  to  the  Jesuits,  whose 
building,  used  as  a  presbytery  as  well  as  a  school,  and  situated  near 
Champlain's  ChapcUc  dc  la  Rccouvrancc,  was  burned  in  June  14. 
The  fire  spread  to  and  consumed  the  wooden  church  itself,  so  that 
till  the  Jesuits'  own  church,  in  connection  with  their  college,  was 
finished  in  1653,  the  chapel  of  the  Hotel  Dieu  was  the  parish 
church  of  Quebec. 

Two  more  Ursuline  nuns  arrived  with  the  Hospitalieres,  and 
an  addition  was  made  to  the  Society  of  Jesus ;  but  there  is  no  rec- 
ord of  the  number  of  actual  settlers  who  came  into  the  country,  or 
of  the  commerce  of  the  post.  Nevertheless,  it  was  a  busy  summer. 
In  fact,  the  short  period  of  the  fleet's  stay  every  year  was  so 
crowded  with  work  and  distraction,  that  on  one  occasion.  Father 
le  Jeune  tells  us,  they  postponed  the  baptism  of  an  Indian  cate- 
chumen till  after  it  had  sailed.  There  had  been  this  summer 
an  unusual  piece  of  dissipation.  The  Dauphin's  birthday  had 
been  celebrated  by  a  theatrical  performance,  either  in  the  Jesuit 
College  or  at  the  castle.  The  play  is  designated  as  a  tragi- 
comedy, and  was  composed  and  put  upon  the  stage  by  Martial 
Piraube.  Father  le  Jeune  describes  the  performance  with  much 
detail,  for,  at  the  request  of  the  pious  Governor,  it  was  turned  to 
the  edification  of  the  Indians,  by  the  introduction  of  a  scene  in 
which  a  lost  soul  was  seen  chased  by  demons  into  actual  flames, 
its  shrieks  of  despair  responded  to  by  the  exulting  shouts  of  devils. 


270  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

The  Indians  were  all  much  impressed,  and  one  was  actually  con- 
verted. 

A  great  excitement  was  also  caused  in  the  month  of  June  by 
the  news  of  the  approach  of  a  most  unexpected  visitor,  under  the 
guidance  of  some  Abenaki  Indians.  He  was  an  Englishman,  who 
had  descended  the  Chaudiere  from  Maine,  in  search  of  the  North- 
west passage,  which  he  hoped  to  find  by  way  of  the  Saguenay.  He 
had  been  in  New  Mexico,  and  had  heard  stories  of  a  great  sea 
which  he  understood  to  be  to  the  north  instead  of  to  the  west  of 
that  distant  region.  The  gorge  of  the  Saguenay  he  believed  to  be 
an  arm  of  this  sea.  But  New  France  was  not  a  field  for  explora- 
tion except  for  Frenchmen ;  the  English  tourist  was  therefore  ar- 
rested before  he  reached  the  town,  and  ordered  to  return  by  the 
way  he  had  come.  As  the  waters  of  the  Chaudiere  and  the  Loup 
had  fallen,  this  was  impossible,  so  he  was  ordered  to  leave  the 
country  by  ship.  He  saw  the  object  of  his  dreams,  the  mouth  of 
the  Saguenay,  at  Tadousac,  and  the  sight  must  have  made  him 
eager  to  prove  or  disprove  his  theory.  The  French,  however,  al- 
ready knew  that  the  Saguenay  was  a  river  and  had  its  head  waters 
in  a  small  lake.  Sieur  Nicolet,  moreover,  had  already  ascended  the 
Sault  Ste.  Marie  and  seen  the  setting  sun  dip  into  the  great  Lake ; 
and  though  he  knew  this  could  not  be  the  Western  Ocean — for  its 
waters  were  fresh — it  was  agreed  that  it  was  at  least  the  inland 
sea,  which  the  Englishman  was  in  search  of  to  the  north  of  Mexico. 
It  was  therefore  clear  to  them  that  it  was  idle  to  seek  a  route  to 
China  by  way  of  the  Saguenay. 

Father  le  Jeune  returned  to  France  in  the  autumn  of  1640,  to 
plead  for  more  energetic  measures  against  the  Iroquois,  and  more 
activity  in  the  work  of  colonization  and  Christianization.  He  did 
this  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  an  association  was  already  being 
formed  to  establish  a  fortified  post  on  the  Island  of  Montreal  with 
these  very  objects  in  view.  That  enterprise  was  not  controlled 
by  the  Society  of  Jesus.  Its  promoters  hoped  to  people 
their  settlement  with  Indian  converts,  whom  they  fondly  be- 
lieved they  could  protect  from  the  bloodthirsty  Iroquois.  The 
impelling  motive,  therefore,  was  above  all  religious.  The 
Montreal    colonists    embarked    from    Rochelle    and    Dieppe    in 


ARRIVAL   OF    M.    DE    MAISONNEUVE.  Zyi 

three  ships,  with  other  passengers  for  New  France.  Among 
them  was  a  Jesuit,  Pere  de  la  Place,  and  the  secular  chap- 
lain of  the  Ursulines,  the  Rev.  Mons.  Antoine  Pauls.  The  Rev. 
Father  Rapin,  Provincial  of  the  RecoUets,  as  well  as  the  Jesuit  or- 
ganization in  Old  France,  had  lent  their  aid  to  this  new  enterprise, 
to  which  a  grant  of  the  Island  of  Montreal  had  been  made  by  Mon- 
sieur de  Lauzon,  with  the  consent  of  the  Company  of  the  One 
Hundred  Associates.  So  far  all  was  well,  but  there  was  by  no 
means  the  same  harmony  in  Canada  when  the  newcomers  present- 
ed themselves.  Of  the  three  ships  the  first  to  arrive  at 
Quebec  was  that  which  had  on  board  Mademoiselle  Mance, 
a  young  woman  inflamed  with  as  ardent  a  missionary  fervor 
as  Madame  de  la  Peltrie,  but  of  a  less  impulsive  temperament, 
and  apparently  possessed  of  more  common  sense.  She  employed 
her  time  while  awaiting  the  arrival  of  her  chief,  Mons.  Paul 
de  Chomedey,  Sieur  de  Maisonneuve,  in  gauging  the  opin- 
ion of  the  Quebec  settlement  regarding  the  new  enterprise.  The 
account  of  what  occurred,  as  told  by  the  author  of  the  "Histoire 
de  Montreal,"  generally  attributed  to  Mons.  DoUier  de  Casson,  a 
priest  of  the  Order  of  St.  Sulpicc,  and  third  Superior  of  the  Or- 
der in  Montreal,  gives  a  charming  picture  of  the  courteous  man- 
ners which  the  early  Quebec  settlers  had  transplanted  from  Old 
to  New  France,  and  of  the  generous  hospitality  displayed  by 
those  who  themselves  had  known  what  it  was  to  be  strangers  in  a 
strange  land. 

As  soon  as  Mons.  de  Maisonneuve  arrived  he  heard  from 
Mademoiselle  Mance  that,  officially,  he  must  expect  to  be  less  cor- 
dially received  by  certain  personages  than  perhaps  he  had  antici- 
pated. This  imexpected  communication  dampened  somewhat  the 
joy  of  the  moment,  but  as  the  good  priest  expresses  it,  "Such 
heroes  of  the  Cross  must  expect  to  taste  bitter,  as  well  as  sweet." 
Nevertheless,  he  made,  without  delay,  ceremonious  calls  on  Mons. 
de  Montmagny,  the  Jesuit  Fathers,  and  other  persons  of  conse- 
quence. They  were  not  many,  inasmuch  as  the  total  population, 
including  priests  and  nuns,  was  less  than  one  hundred  souls. 
He  found  that  those  inimical  to  his  project  had  persuaded 
the   Governor   to  oppose   the   establishment   of  a   post   in   Mon- 


2/2  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY, 

treal  on  the  ground  of  the  difficulty,  if  not  impossibility,  of  de- 
fending it  against  the  attacks  of  the  Iroquois.  In  any  case  the 
Governor  urged  him  to  defer  his  visit  to  the  future  Ville-Marie 
until  the  following  spring.  It  is  not  stated  whether  the  opposition 
came  from  the  commercial  interests  of  the  colony,  which  feared 
competition,  or  from  the  Jesuits,  who  foresaw  ecclesiastical  as 
well  as  civil  complications  as  likely  to  grow  out  of  the  new  under- 
taking; or  whether  Montmagny  was  himself  piqued  that  so  im- 
portant a  commission,  to  be  exercised  apparently  in  independence 
of  his  authority,  should  have  been  created  within  the  recognized 
limits  of  his  government.  The  opposition  is  generally  attributed 
solely  to  the  Commercial  Company,  who  foresaw  that  the  head  of 
navigation  and  the  meeting  spot  of  the  two  great  rivers 
would  eventually  become  the  great  mart  of  furs.  If  the 
Jesuits  were  in  opposition  they  must  have  eventually  ac- 
quiesced, otherwise  the  Governor,  who  was  guided  wholly 
by  their  counsels,  would  not  have  yielded.  From  a  military 
point  of  view  the  Governor  was  justified  in  opposing  the 
foundation  of  a  new  town  at  that  time,  as  events  proved 
that  neither  he  nor  the  local  Governor  was  able  to  protect  it. 
The  traders  were  right  in  anticipating  that  trade  would  be 
deflected  from  its  existing  channels ;  and  the  Jesuit  Fathers 
knew  that  one  of  the  most  ardent  apostles  of  the  new  movement 
was  Jean  Jacques  Olier,  a  young  and  enthusiastic  priest,  who 
was  not  a  member  of  their  order.  This  ecclesiastic  subse- 
quently founded  the  Seminary  of  St.  Sulpice  in  Paris,  a  com- 
munity which  acquired  the  rights  of  the  Montreal  company 
and  the  ownership  of  the  island  itself.  The  rivalry  between  the 
two  towns  thus  commenced  in  their  very  infancy.  But  the  elo- 
quence of  Mons.  de  Maisonneuve,  his  religious  enthusiasm  and 
military  ardor,  bore  down  all  opposition,  and  Montmagny  him- 
self accompanied  him,  late  as  it  was  in  the  season,  to  the  scene  of 
his  future  government.  They  started  together  in  the  beginning 
of  October,  and  reached  Montreal  on  the  14th  of  that  month.  On 
the  following  day,  they  took  formal  possession  in  the  name  of  the 
company,  and  soon  returned. 

On  their  journey  back  they  experienced  special  marks,  as  we 


A  HALT  AT  QUEBEC.  273 

read,  of  the  Saviour's  favor,  for,  having  reached  St.  Foy,  a 
day's  journey  from  Quebec,  they  were  entertained  by  Mons.  de 
Pizeaux,  an  old  gentleman  of  seventy-five  years  of  age,  who  was  so 
impressed  by  Mons.  de  Maisonneuve's  pious  scheme  that  he  prayed 
to  be  allowed  to  join  the  association,  and  to  devote  not  only  himself 
but  his  property  at  St.  Foy,  and  all  he  possessed,  to  their  service. 
He  pleaded  that  at  St.  Foy  there  were  oak  forests  close  to  the  river, 
where  boats  for  the  Montreal  Company  could  be  built  during  the 
winter  months,  while  at  Pointe  aux  Pizeaux  the  furniture  and 
equipment  for  the  Montreal  fort  could  be  made,  ere  spring  and 
open  navigation  would  permit  their  transportation.  To  Maison- 
neuve,  perplexed  by  the  difficulty  of  housing  and  providing  for 
his  whole  company  during  the  long  winter  months,  the  oflfer 
sounded  like  a  voice  from  heaven,  but  he  had  to  defer  formal 
acceptance  until  he  had  consulted  his  colleagues.  Meanwhile, 
however,  he  installed  his  surgeon  and  his  head  carpenter  at  St. 
Foy,  to  superintend  the  boat  building,  and  descended  to  Pointe 
aux  Pizeaux,  where  his  host  put  his  house,  the  very  jewel  of  the 
colony,  le  bijou  du  pais,  and  all  that  it  contained,  at  his  disposal, 
informing  Madame  de  la  Peltrie,  who  had  heretofore  been  his 
guest,  that  she  must  henceforth  consider  Mons.  de  Maisonneuve 
as,  not  only  her  host,  but  the  owner  in  his  stead  of  all  that  he 
possessed. 

Thus  the  society  of  Quebec  was  during  all  that  winter  enlivened 
by  the  presence  of  a  group  of  intelligent  enthusiasts,  whose  ulti- 
mate aim  was  at  one  with  that  of  the  dominant  party,  though  there 
was  sufficient  diflference  in  their  methods  and  projects  to 
leave  room  for  lively  discussion.  Yet  as  Pointe  aux  Pizeaux  was 
miles  away  from  the  Castle  of  St.  Louis  and  the  Jesuits'  House, 
and  as  there  was  not  yet  a  horse  in  the  colony,  communication 
must  have  been  difficult.  The  benevolent  old  gentleman,  some 
years  later,  changed  his  mind,  for  according  to  Mons.  I'Abbe 
de  Belmont's  "Histoire  de  la  Nouvelle  France,"  he  repent- 
ed in  1645  of  ^lis  gift  and  it  was  returned  to  him.  The  whole 
company,  however,  did  not  accept  of  Mons.  Pizcaux's  hospital- 
ity. Despite  the  entreaty  of  the  Governor,  who  urged  them  to 
tarry  till  spring  and  enjoy  such  comforts  as  the   Fort  offered, 


274  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

Father  Antoine  Pauls  and  some  twenty-five  colonists,  accompanied 
by  the  Jesuit  Father  Vimont,  in  their  anxiety  to  engage  in  their 
holy  work,  started  for  Montreal,  where  they  arrived  almost  as 
winter  was  setting  in,  occupied  the  camp  which  had  been  prepared 
for  them,  and  bravely  faced  the  future.  They  were  not  short  of 
food,  for,  the  year  before,  the  Montreal  Association  had  shipped 
twenty  tons  of  supplies.  But  the  Iroquois  were  prowling  every- 
where around,  and  the  terrors  of  impending  winter,  as  well  as  of 
the  wilderness,  might  well  have  appalled  these  sons  of  sunny 
France,  had  their  faith  and  pious  enthusiasm  not  been  proof 
against' all  fears.  Thus  was  Montreal  founded  as  a  harbor  for  the 
hunted  Indians ;  colonization  was  pushed  one  hundred  miles  furth- 
er up  the  river  than  Three  Rivers,  and  the  first  regular  intercourse 
by  boat  was  established ;  one  of  the  conditions  on  which  the  island 
was  granted  being  that  the  company  should  furnish  two  shal- 
lops or  pinnaces  to  ply  between  Quebec  and  Montreal  and  carry 
freight  and  colonists'  supplies. 

The  amenities  of  life  were  sure  to  be  found  in  a  colony  the  in- 
habitants of  which  were  French.  The  glimpse  which  we 
get  of  Mons.  Pizeaux's  house  at  Sillery,  with  its  open  door 
and  hospitable  hearth,  shows  that  the  fascinations  and  glori- 
ous scenery  of  the  St.  Lawrence  had  already  attracted  some 
wealth,  and  that  wealth  had  introduced  some  refinements.  But 
so  long  as  the  colony  was  at  the  mercy  of  the  Iroquois,  nothing 
could  prosper.  Well  aware  of  this,  the  Governor  on  his  return  in 
the  spring  of  1642  from  installing  de  Maisonneuve  in  pos- 
session of  the  Island  of  Montreal,  determined  to  build  a  fort 
at  the  mouth  of  the  River  of  the  Iroquois,  and  to  name  it  after 
the  great  Cardinal.  The  name  has  since  been  transferred  to 
the  river.  He  then  proceeded  to  enlist  the  first  contingent  of  Can- 
adian militia — one  hundred  of  the  colonists — who  proved  their 
efficiency  by  repelling  an  attack  made  by  a  band  of  Iroquois  while 
the  fort  was  in  course  of  construction.  But  the  result  of  stop- 
ping one  outlet  from  the  Iroquois  country  was  merely  to  make 
the  flood  of  savagery  burst  forth  from  others.  To  the  south 
of  the  Adirondacks  is  a  chain  of  lakes  and  rivers,  which 
link  the  Mohawk  with  the  St.  Lawrence  by  shorter  portages  than 


IROQUOIS   MASSACRES.  275 

even  the  Lake  Champlain  route.  By  it  the  Indians  of  the  Five 
Nations  could  reach  the  mouth  of  the  Ottawa  by  canoe  from  the 
territory  of  the  Mohawks,  while  the  Hurons  themselves,  in  blazing 
a  trail  for  Champlain,  had  pointed  the  way  to  their  enemies  be- 
tween the  Georgian  Bay  and  the  Genessee  River  by  way  of  the 
Trent  and  Lake  Ontario. 

Terror  seized  Quebec  in  August,  1642.  Father  Jogues 
had  been  recalled  from  the  Huron  country  by  his  Superior, 
and  was  returning  with  some  French  and  a  number  of 
Hurons  in  August,  when  the  whole  party  was  surprised  and  at- 
tacked by  Iroquois  at  a  point  only  about  forty-five  miles  above 
Quebec.  The  story  of  the  heroism  of  his  companions  and  of  his 
own  devotion  forms  one  of  the  most  thrilling  episodes  of  Canadian 
history.  The  incident  forced  upon  the  people  of  Quebec,  and  still 
more  appallingly  on  the  exposed  colony  of  Sillery,  the  con- 
viction that  no  one  was  safe  from  the  ruthless  savages, 
armed  no  longer  with  bows  and  arrows,  but  with  matchlocks  as 
deadly  as  those  of  the  white  men.  The  Dutch  Governors  of  New 
Netherlands  had  forbidden  the  sale  of  firearms  and  ammunition 
to  the  Indians,  but  while  they  had  been  able  to  enforce  their 
regulations  on  traders  dealing  with  Algonquin  tribes  on  and  near 
Manhattan  Island,  they  were  powerless  to  control  the  trade  of  the 
padrons  of  Rensellaerwick,  whose  cheapest  articles  of  barter 
with  the  Iroquois  of  the  neighboring  confederacy  were  mus- 
kets, powder  and  shot.  Thus  it  came  about  that,  of  all  the  Indians 
of  the  continent,  those  in  whose  hands  firearms  were  most  danger- 
ous were  those  who  could  most  readily  procure  them.  From  this 
time  forward  the  Iroquois  set  equally  at  defiance  their  Indian 
enemies  and  the  French.  Becoming  bolder  and  more  aggressive, 
they  changed  their  tactics,  scattering  in  small  bands,  and 
striking  blows  in  rapid  succession  where  least  expected,  and 
at  points  distant  one  from  another,  along  the  river.  In  the 
early  spring  a  company  of  Hurons  with  their  peltries  was 
captured  above  Three  Rivers.  A  month  later  another  band  of  140 
Iroquois  took  thirteen  canoes  filled  with  Hurons  near  the  Island 
of  Montreal  itself,  seized  their  cargoes,  and  killed  or  captured 
most  of  the   men.      Five   Frenchmen   who   were  working  near 


276  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

the  fort  were  made  prisoners.  Quebec  had  not  been  attacked, 
and  would  not  be  as  long  as  its  men  remained  to  defend  it ;  and  it 
was  clear  that,  unless  soldiers  arrived  from  France  to  protect  the 
colony,  the  colonists  themselves,  with  all  the  will  in  the  world, 
would  not  think  of  leaving  their  homes  exposed  to  attack  in  order 
to  make  an  aggressive  move. 

News  reached  Chanfleur,  Governor  of  Three  Rivers,  through 
an  escaped  Huron,  that  Father  Jogues  was  still  alive,  and  forth- 
with Governor  Montmagny  started  from  Quebec  in  four  shallops 
for  Fort  Richelieu,  around  which  an  Iroquois  band  had  been  hover- 
ing, hoping,  either  by  force  of  arms  or  by  persuasion,  to  secure  the 
Father's  release.  On  his  appearance  the  enemy  vanished,  and 
he  dared  not  follow  them  by  their  forest  trails.  Then  came  a 
letter  from  Jogues  himself — the  fourth  he  had  written.  It 
created  gloomy  foreboding.  His  winter's  residence  in  the  Mo- 
hawk village  had  convinced  him  that  the  Iroquois  could  harry 
the  Hurons,  until  those  who  remained  would  be  compelled  to  ac- 
cept adoption  into  the  Five  Nations ;  and  he  saw  clearly  that  they 
would  be  helpless  unless  the  French  sent  an  army  to  protect  them, 
for  the  Mohawks  alone  could  muster  seven  hundred  warriors, 
armed  with  three  hundred  arquebuses.  Yet  certainly  France  at 
the  moment  could  not  furnish  any  military  assistance.  Richelieu, 
to  whom  regenerated  Canada  owed  its  very  existence,  died  in  De- 
cember, 1642,  and  the  King,  whose  most  eminent  virtue  had  been 
his  willingness  to  be  led  by  his  great  Minister,  followed  him  to  the 
grave  a  few  months  later.  Louis  XIV.  was  only  five  years  of 
age.  Anne  of  Austria,  his  mother,  was  trusted  by  no  one.  Cardi- 
nal Mazarin,  her  adviser,  was  hated  by  all.  Thus  distrust  and 
discontent  were  breeding  civil  strife  at  home,  while  the  final 
struggles  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War  were  wasting  what  remained 
of  France's  financial  resources  and  cruelly  diminishing  her  popu- 
lation. 

Colonization  could  not  flourish  when  such  complications  in  the 
foreign  and  domestic  affairs  of  France  coincided  with  the  Iroquois 
War,  which  almost  extinguished  the  fur  trade,  completed  the  ruin 
of  the  company,  and  distracted  the  energies  of  the  colonists  from 
agricultural   pursuits.     For  three  years   there   was   only  broken 


SLOW   GROWTH    OF   THE   COLONY.  ,3^ 

intercourse  between  Quebec  and  the  Georgian  Bay.  Father 
Bressani,  as  well  as  Father  Jogues,  fell  into  the  hands  of 
the  Mohawks,  but  though  they  were  tortured,  the  Indians 
apparently  considered  it  impolitic  to  kill  them.  Several 
Relations  were  irretrievably  lost  in  transmission  from  the  mis- 
sionaries at  the  Huron  bourgade  to  Father  \'imont,  the  Superior 
in  Quebec.  Meanwhile,  however,  the  fervor  of  the  missionaries 
was  fanned  by  the  risks  they  ran,  and  their  zeal  bore  fruit  in  the 
widespread  conversion  of  the  Indians.  After  making  all  allow- 
ance for  exaggeration  of  statement  due  to  a  natural  and  laud- 
able enthusiasm,  it  seems  to  be  true  that  the  whole  Huron  nation 
accepted  the  practice  of  Christianity,  and,  as  far  as  their  language 
could  express  them,  the  doctrines  and  tenets  of  the  Church,  and 
that  fair  progress  was  made  in  evangelizing  the  less  intelligent 
and  more  barbarous  tribes  of  the  Algonquin  stock  to  the  north  and 
south  of  the  St.  Lawrence. 

The  population  of  Quebec  grew  very  slowly,  but  some  notable 
accessions  were  made  to  the  colony.  Mons.  d'Aillebout  arrived  in 
the  summer  of  1643,  with  his  wife  and  daughters.  He  was  deep- 
ly interested  in  the  Montreal  enterprise,  and  played  a  conspicu- 
ous, if  not  a  very  brilliant,  part  in  the  future  history  of  the  colony. 
His  coming  was  very  welcome,  for  it  had  been  a  specially  anxious 
summer.  It  was  the  15th  of  August  before  the  first  two  ships  of 
the  season  hove  in  sight,  having  on  board,  besides  himself  and 
family,  Mons.  Chartres  (who  came  out  as  the  cure  of  the  Ursu- 
lines),  four  more  Jesuit  Fathers  and  three  nuns.  The  religious 
recruits  were  the  only  ones  who  had  any  enthusiasm  for  their 
work.  Had  the  government  of  France  and  the  mercantile  interests 
been  as  alive  to  the  vast  extent  and  value  of  Canada  as  a  field  for 
colonization  and  trade,  the  results  would  have  been  different ;  but, 
in  reality,  it  was  because  the  evangelization  of  the  aborigines  was 
the  most  prominent  motive  in  France,  and  because  the  decidedly 
autocratic  and  restrictive  rules  and  procedure  of  the  Church  deter- 
mined the  principles  of  government  in  the  colony  itself,  that  ma- 
terial progress  was  so  slow.  Not  only  were  the  Huguenots,  with 
their  wealth  and  enterprise,  excluded,  but  the  Church  favored  the 
new  company,  with  its  oppressive  privileges,  because  it  was  con- 


278  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

trolled  by  members  of  the  True  Faith,  and  pledged  to  support  its 
ministers  and  follow  their  guidance. 

Already,  however,  the  alliance  between  the  Church  and  the 
company  was  exposing  the  priests  to  suspicion.  As  early  as  1636 
Father  le  Jeune  was  compelled  to  clear  himself  and  his  fellow 
priests  of  a  charge,  made  to  the  Provincial  in  France,  that  they 
were  engaging  in  the  fur  trade.  One  may  assume  that  the  com- 
plaint was  made  by  the  company.  Father  le  Jeune  points 
out  that,  while  no  one  but  the  company  can  export  furs,  any 
habitant  may  buy  them  in  exchange  for  produce  and  resell  to  the 
company.  They  had  purchased  them  for  clothing  and  domes- 
tic use,  and  as  long  as  they  merely  used  and  did  not  ex- 
port them,  they  considered  themselves  as  acting  within  their 
rights.  Now,  however,  they  were  accused  of  having  an  interest 
in  the  company's  operations,  and  of  using  their  exceptional  ad- 
vantages for  the  furtherance  of  commercial  purposes.  In  rebut- 
tal of  the  slander,  the  Abbe  de  la  Ferte  and  others  felt  impelled 
by  Christian  charity  to  disabuse  the  minds  of  those  who  might  be 
inclined  to  believe  these  rumors  by  declaring  in  the  most  formal 
manner  that  the  Jesuit  Fathers  were  not  associated  with  the  com- 
pany of  New  France,  either  directly  or  indirectly,  and  had  no  part 
or  parcel  in  the  company's  mercantile  transactions. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

The  Trading  Company  of  the  Habitants,  the  Constitu- 
tion o{  J  647  and  the  Close  of  Governor  Mont- 
magny^s  Term  of  Office. 

Scanty  as  the  population  was,  it  was  beginning  to  fret  under 
the  restrictions  of  trade.  Before  the  Iroquois  War,  when  the  In- 
dians came  down  in  crowds,  the  prosperity  was  general.  Now 
trade  was  at  a  standstill,  and  every  one  in  authority  was  to  blame 
— primarily  the  company,  inferentially  the  clergy,  who  were  such 
close  friends  and  intimate  advisers  of  the  Governor,  and 
whose  Relations  were  so  full  of  complimentary  references  to 
the  big  trade  corporation.  Even  the  Iroquois  troubles  were  laid, 
in  no  small  degree,  at  the  door  of  the  Jesuits.  To  the  immigrants, 
the  Hurons  must  have  been  only  Indians,  and  one  Indian  was  as 
good  or  as  bad  as  another.  Why,  because  the  Hurons  were 
converts  to  Christianity  and  the  pets  of  the  Jesuits,  the  whole 
country  should  be  exposed  to  the  ravages  of  their  enemies, 
must  at  times  have  been  a  question  that  the  French  hab- 
itants and  the  people  of  Quebec  and  Three  Rivers  asked  them- 
selves with  some  bitterness  of  spirit.  The  only  contemporary 
records  are  the  Jesuits'  own  narrative,  and  they  give  voice  to  no 
such  discontent.  Dissatisfaction  and  suspicion  nevertheless  were 
abroad,  and  they  found  vent  in  the  sending  of  a  deputation  to 
France,  to  secure  from  the  King  and  the  company  some  relaxation 
of  the  restraints  on  trade,  and  also  to  petition  for  the  return  of 
the  Recollets. 

The  deputation  consisted  of  Pierre  de  Garde  de  Repentigny, 
of  whom  we  have  heard  as  arriving  with  his  pretty  daughters  in 
1637,  and  Jean  Paul  Godefroy,  one  of  the  original  settlers,  who  had 
left  the  country  with  Champlain  on  the  first  conquest  of  Quebec. 
The  denial  of  complicity  by  the  Jesuits  was  made  on  December  I, 
1643  '<  the  meeting  of  the  company  to  discuss  the  modification  in 


28o  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

their  charter  was  held  between  December,  1644,  and  January, 
1645 ;  and  a  new  arrangement  was  agreed  to  between  the  com- 
pany and  the  deputation  from  the  inhabitants  of  Canada  on  the 
14th  of  the  same  month.  Clearly,  therefore,  these  concessions 
were  the  results  of  an  agitation  of  some  long  standing  in  the 
colony.  ^ 

As  yet  trade  had  not  drifted  up  the  river  to  Montreal,  and  the 
Montreal  Association  still  confined  itself  to  the  religious  functions 
which  were  the  basis  of  its  organization.    Fort  Richelieu,  on  the 
site  of  Sorel,  had  not  yet  become  the  nucleus  of  a  settlement.     The 
small  traders  of  Quebec  and  Three  Rivers  resented  the  oppress- 
ive privileges  of  the  company,  and  the  habitants  were  probably 
hampered  by  the  company's  agents  in  disposing  of  the  peltries 
which  they  received  in  exchange  for  their  farm  products.    The  doc- 
ument in  which  new  terms  were  granted  to  the  people  of  Canada 
declares  that  the  company  holds  inviolate  its  territorial  and  seig- 
norial  rights,  but  that  it  cedes  and  remits,  subject  to  the  King's 
good  pleasure,  to  the  inhabitants  of  the  country,  present  and  to 
come,  all  its  exclusive  rights  and  functions  to  engage  in  the  trade 
of  skins  and  furs  in  New  France,  over  the  whole  length  of  the 
lands  which  border  the  great  river  St.  Lawrence  and  its  tributaries, 
to  its  discharge  into  the  sea,  commencing  at  ten  leagues  from 
the  concession  of  Miscou,  on  the  south  and  north  shores,  as  far  as 
the  limits  of  the  said  company's  privileges  extended,  excluding, 
however,  trade  in  the  colonies  of  Acadia,  Miscou  and  Cape  Breton. 
But  it  makes  the  concession  only  on  condition  that  the  colonists 
relieve   the  company   of   its   charter   obligation   to   support   the 
colony  of  New  FVance,  and  therefore  discharge  the  company  of 
the  ordinary  expense  it  has  heretofore  borne  in  supporting  the 
ecclesiastics,  governors,  lieutenants,  captains,  soldiers,  garrison  in 
the  fort  and  throughout  the  inhabited  portions  of  the  same  coun- 
try, and  generally  all  other  charges  which  may  be  due  by  the  com- 
pany under  the  original  charter.     But  no  skins  or  peltries  are  to 
be  sold  to  any  one  but  the  company,  nor  exported  through  any 
other  channel  than  the  company's  ships.    The  Queen  Regent  con- 
farms  this  very  one-sided  arrangement,  which  concedes  little  or 
nothing  to  the  people,  while  relieving  the  company  of  its  obli- 


THE    habitants'    COMPANY.  281 

gation  to  the  crown  and  the  colony.  Richeheu  would  never  have 
consented  to  it.  It  made  every  inhabitant  who  bought  skins  the 
mere  agent  of  the  company,  as  no  one  but  the  company  could  re- 
purchase or  export  them.  The  document  recites  that  the  company 
has  spent  1,200,000  livres,  over  and  above  its  revenue,  and  that 
the  debts  for  which  the  associates  are  individually  liable  amount 
to  400,000  livres  more.  The  inhabitants  agreed  to  compensate 
the  company  by  the  annual  payment  of  1,000  pounds  weight  of 
beaver  skins,  and  appointed  Noel  Juchereau  de  Chastelet  their 
clerk,  but  no  such  consideration  is  mentioned  in  the  Edict.  At  the 
same  time  a  shadow  of  municipal  government  would  seem  to 
have  been  granted  to  Canada,  though  no  official  document  exists 
which  confirms  the  concession.  Each  of  the  towns  of  Quebec, 
Three  Rivers  and  Montreal  was  allowed  to  appoint  a  syndic,  and 
the  three  persons  so  appointed  were  to  constitute  an  advisory 
board  to  confer,  but  notliing  more,  with  the  Governor.  It  was  a 
very  meagre  measure  of  self-government.* 

The  trade  concessions  were  small,  but  the  people  at  once  took 
advantage  of  them.  Father  Lalemant  tells  us  that  Pontgrave  ar- 
rived in  August,  1645.  with  five  ships,  bearing  with  him  the  docu- 
ment containing  the  terms  of  the  treaty  between  the  habitants  and 
the  company,  and  that  when  the  Huron  fleet  of  canoes  arrived  at 
Three  Rivers,  the  habitants  bought  the  entire  cargo,  so  that  the 
returning  fleet  was  freighted  with  20,000  pounds  of  beaver  skins 
on  account  of  the  inhabitants,  and  10,000  belonging  to  the  com- 
pany, worth  a  pistole,  or  10  to  11  francs,  to  the  pound.  The  sailing 
of  the  fleet  on  the  24th  of  October  with  the  first  consignment  was 
celebrated  by  the  firing  of  cannons  and  a  general  rejoicing. 

This  first  commercial  transaction  of  the  habitants'  company 
with  the  Indians  had  not  been  eiifected  without  considerable  fric- 
tion with  the  company's  agent.  The  exact  terms  of  the  treaty 
were  rather  vague.  But  the  priests  interposed  their  good  offices, 
and  it  was  decided  ultimately  to  use  the  profits,  whatever  they 
might  be,  in  building  a  church  and  a  presbytery.     Thus  the  first 

*  One  reason  why  the  commercial  conditions  of  the  treaty  must  have  proved 
peculiarly  burdensome  to  the  inhabitants  was  that  the  Montreal  Company,  in 
virtue,  presumably,  of  its  exclusively  religious  intentions,  obtained,  by  convention 
with  the  inhabitants,  exemption  from  the  payment  of  its  share  of  the  consideration. 


282  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

year's  trade  did  not  lighten  the  company's  burden  of  debt,  nor  yet 
did  it  put  money  into  the  pockets  of  the  people.  The  new  con- 
vention can  hardly  have  been  to  the  taste  of  the  Jesuits,  as  it 
transferred  the  responsibility  for  their  partial  support  from  a 
corporation,  with  tangible  assets  and  composed  of  individuals  of 
wealth,  to  a  scattered  community,  witli  no  political  or  financial 
organization.  However  this  may  have  been,  they  did  not  abate 
their  missionary  efforts.  Up  to  1646,  two  of  the  priests  had 
been  captured  by  the  Iroquois  and  tortured,  barely  escaping  with 
their  lives ;  two  had  died,  and  one  had  been  frozen  to  death  in  the 
snows  between  Three  Rivers  and  Fort  Richelieu.  Still  the  total 
number  in  the  colony  continued  to  increase — there  being  thirteen 
or  more  in  the  Huron  hourgades  alone.  In  Quebec  part  of  their 
new  college  building  was  already  in  use,  and  Father  Bressani  was 
teaching  the  French  children.  The  nuns  of  the  Hotel  Dieu,  fear- 
ful of  an  attack  by  the  Iroquois,  had  retreated  from  Sillery  to 
Quebec,  where  their  substantial  hospital  and  chapel  were  ap- 
proaching completion,  and  were  clearing  the  forest  from 
their  grant  of  twelve  acres  at  a  cost  of  150  livres  per  arpent.  The 
number  of  their  patients  always  exceeded  their  accommodations, 
and  they  nursed  in  a  large  wigwam  near  by  those  whom  their  hos- 
pital could  not  receive.  The  Ursulines  in  1642  moved  from  their 
temporary  quarters  in  the  Lower  Town  and  took  possession  of 
their  wooden  building.  In  1644  Madame  de  la  Peltrie  built  a  two 
storied  stone  house  on  the  Ursuline  reservation.  The  Jesuits  were 
occupymg  quarters  in  the  company's  building,  supposed  to  have 
been  situated  where  the  English  Cathedral  now  stands,  and  had 
appropriated  one  of  the  rooms  for  use  as  a  chapel.  A  curious  pic- 
ture has  been  preserved  of  the  Convent  and  its  grounds,  made  at 
some  date  between  the  erection  in  1644  of  Madame  de  la  Peltrie's 
house,  which  appears  in  the  foreground,  and  the  fire  of  1650, 
which  destroyed  the  nunnery.  We  have  reproduced  it  from 
"Glimpses  of  the  Monastery." 

Both  the  Ursulines  and  the  Hospitalieres  were  ready  to  extend 
their  good  offices  to  all  who  needed  aid.  the  latter  relieving  the 
needy,  as  well  as  the  sick,  the  former  throwing  their  doors  open  to 
the  squaw  as  freely  as  to  her  child.     Whatever  resentment  there 


The  First  Ursuline  Convent,  Burnt  in  1650. 

Madame  de  la  Peltrie's  house  is  in  the  foreground. 

From  an  old  painting  in  the  Ursuline  Convent. 

Reproduced  from  Glbnpses  o/a  Monastery. 


A   COUNCIL  AT   THREE   RIVERS.  283 

may  have  been  against  the  growing  influence  of  the  Jesuits  in 
pohtics,  the  reHgious  ladies,  whether  they  had  taken  the  vows  or 
were  still  free  to  shape  their  own  course,  like  Madame  de  la  Pel- 
trie  or  Mademoiselle  Mance,  or  Margaret  Bourgeoys,  were  the 
leaven  of  unselfishness  and  purity,  elevating  the  social  life  of  the 
whole  colony. 

During  this  summer  of  1645,  there  was  a  break  in  the  black 
cloud  which  had  for  over  three  years  overhung  the  colony.  In 
the  previous  autumn  the  Hurons  had  taken  three  Iroquois  prison- 
ers, one  of  whom  they  had  given  to  their  allies,  the  Algonquins, 
who  in  turn  presented  him  manacled  and  half  dead  to  the  Gov- 
ernor of  Three  Rivers.  In  the  spring  two  other  Iroquois  prison- 
ers were  taken  by  Algonquin  Indians  from  Sillery,  and  brought 
alive  to  that  settlement.  Mons.  de  Montmagny  wisely  decided 
to  hold  these  prisoners  as  hostages  for  the  return  of  two  French- 
men retained  by  the  Iroquois,  and  he  induced  Mons.  de  Chan- 
fleur  to  send  the  third,  who  had  received  every  care  and  kindness 
from  the  French  at  Three  Rivers,  as  a  messenger  of  peace  to  the 
Iroquois.  He  fulfilled  his  mission  promptly,  faithfully  and  skill- 
fully, for  by  the  5th  of  July  he  had  returned  to  Three  Rivers  with 
two  Iroquois  chiefs,  commissioned  to  treat  for  peace,  not  only 
with  the  French,  but  with  their  Indian  allies.  With  them  came 
Guillaume  Couture,  one  of  the  Frenchmen  captured  with  Father 
Jogues.  Governor  Montmagny  was  at  once  informed  of  the  ar- 
rival of  the  embassy,  and  htirried  up  to  the  council,  which  was 
held  with  due  solemnity,  elaborate  ceremony,  and  abundant  ora- 
tory, as  each  of  the  seventeen  wampum  belts  was  a  text  for  a 
separate  head  of  the  oration.  At  the  close  of  the  Iroquois  ha- 
rangue, which  occupied  the  first  day,  all  joined  in  a  dance,  in 
which  the  Iroquois,  the  French,  the  Algonquins.  tlie  Flurons,  the 
Montagnais,  the  Abenakis,  and  the  Etchemins  vied  with  one  an- 
other in  expressing  their  joy.  The  next  day  was  devoted  to  feast- 
ing the  allies  of  France  and  preparing  them  to  accept  a  peace, 
which,  however,  could  be  agreed  to  only  after  profound  considera- 
tion by  the  Governor  of  the  weighty  arguments  used  by  the  Iro- 
quois orators,  hasty  decision  on  anv  grave  question  being,  by 
the  rules  of  Indian  etiquette,  bad  form.     On  the  following  day 


284  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

the  Governor  responded  by  giving  fourteen  presents  to  the  Iro- 
quois ambassadors,  each  present  emphasizing  the  recollection  of 
a  past  injury,  or  a  distinct  principle  or  promise  to  be  respected 
in  the  future,  if  peace  was  to  prevail.  Then  with  more  speech- 
making  by  all  the  parties  to  the  contract,  peace  was  declared, 
and  the  Iroquois  embassy  departed,  amidst  the  roll  of  musketry, 
accompanied  by  two  French  lads,  who  were  entrusted  to  their 
care  as  a  token  of  confidence. 

The  first  fruit  of  the  peace  was  the  arrival,  unrnkDlested,  of  a 
fleet  of  sixty  Huron  canoes,  laden  with  furs,  and  bringing  back 
Father  Lalemant,  who  had  been  appointed  Superior  of  the  mis- 
sion in  place  of  Father  \'imont.  also  some  soldiers,  who  had  been 
sent  out  the  year  before  from  France,  and  whom  the  Governor 
had  hurried  forward  to  protect  the  missionaries  on  Lake  Huron. 
Though  the  French  government  sent  the  troops  (twenty-two 
men  in  all),  it  made  no  provision  for  their  maintenance.  During 
the  year  that  they  were  in  the  Huron  country  they  were  quar- 
tered on  the  Jesuit  Fathers,  who  claimed  that  they  not  only  acted 
as  commissary  agents,  but  as  medical  staff  and  as  armourers, 
and  that  at  least  two  hundred  livres  should  have  been  allowed  them 
per  head,  instead  of  the  inadequate  compensation  they  received. 

The  withdrawal  of  the  troops  from  the  Huron  country  was 
another  proof  of  the  fatal  tendency  of  Montmagny  to  lapse  into  a 
false  security.  Had  the  military  force  with  the  Hurons  been  in- 
creased, instead  of  being  withdrawn,  the  terrible  massacres  of 
1648  and  1649  might  have  been  averted.  The  conduct  of  these 
soldiers  differed  widely  from  that  of  other  white  men  thrown 
among  the  Indians,  if  we  may  accept  Father  Vimont's  statement 
that  "they  returned  with  a  fuller  cargo  of  virtue,  and  knowledge 
of  the  sacred  verities,  than  they  had  taken  on  board  in  France." 
Shortly  after  a  delegation  arrived  from  all  the  northern  tribes, 
and  finally,  on  the  17th  of  September,  appeared  four  delegates 
from  the  Mohawks.  These,  though  not  representatives  of  the 
whole  confederacy,  professed  to  be  authorized  to  confirm  the  treaty 
of  peace,  a  ceremony  attended  with  even  more  palaver,  and  ex- 
changing of  wampum  and  presents  than  the  making  of  the 
compact  itself.     The  peace  thus  concluded  lasted  for  less  than  a 


DEATH  OF  FATHER  JOGUES.  285 

year.  Early  in  the  winter  of  1646  a  band  of  Christian  Indians  from 
Sillery  was  attacked,  and  three  of  them  were  killed ;  but  it  was 
proved  that  the  onslaught  was  made  by  members  of  the  Soko- 
quiois  tribe,  who  were  not  members  of  the  confederacy  and  had 
not  been  a  party  to  the  treaty. 

The  belief  that  the  Mohawks,  at  any  rate,  would  be  true  to  their 
pledges  was  expressed  by  a  visit  of  Father  Jogues  to  the  scene  of 
his  former  sufferings.  He  neither  heard  nor  saw  anything  to  shake 
confidence  in  their  sincerity.  So  satisfied  was  he  that  a  field  for 
successful  missionary  efifort  existed  among  them  that,  after  re- 
porting to  Governor  Montmagny,  whom  he  met  at  Fort  Richelieu, 
he  returned  with  a  lay  brother.  La  Lande,  to  the  Mohawk  country. 
His  Algonquin  guides,  anticipating  trouble,  deserted,  but, 
nothing  daunted,  the  two  brave  and  devoted  men  tramped 
through  the  forest  until  they  reached  an  Iroquois  village.  There, 
without  any  ostensible  reason,  they  were  seized,  stripped, 
gagged,  exposed  to  every  contumely,  moved  from  place  to  place, 
and  finally  killed.  The  horrible  war  had  thus  broken  out  afresh 
with  greater  animosity  than  ever.  The  Governor  and  his  priestly 
advisers  seem  to  have  put  more  faith  in  the  promises  of  the  Iro- 
quois than  either  their  Indian  allies  or  the  colonists,  for  Mont- 
magny had  withdrawn  nearly  the  whole  garrison  from  Fort  Riche- 
lieu, and  Father  Lalemant,  now  Superior,  had  gone  into  raptures 
over  the  fact  that  the  Iroquois  and  Algonquins  were  hunting  the 
moose  together  north  of  the  St.  Lawrence.  The  Algonquins  did 
not  share  his  enthusiasm  or  his  confidence.  The  first  breach  of  the 
peace  was  made  by  some  of  the  Senecas,  who,  prowling  around  a 
Huron  bourgade,  could  not  resist  the  temptation,  when  all  were 
asleep,  of  scaling  the  palisade  and  killing  one  man  and  scalping 
another.     Reprisals  at  once  of  course  followed. 

In  all  probability  the  renewal  of  hostility  by  the  Mohawks 
was  due  to  superstitious  impulse.  A  strange  epidemic 
had  broken  out  in  the  tribe  and  carried  ofif  many  of  its 
members.  The  summer  of  peace  had  unfortunately  been  re- 
markable for  a  bad  harvest  and  a  plague  of  insects,  closely  fol- 
lowed by  famine  and  disease.  A  number  of  Hurons  who  had 
not  yielded  to  the  influence  of  the  missionaries,  but  were  still 


286  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

wedded  to  their  ancient  superstitions,  had  been  incorporated 
into  the  tribe,  and  these  told  of  the  spread  of  disease  and  all 
the  woes  which  had  followed  the  advent  of  the  Black  Robes  and 
tlie  acceptance  of  Christianity  by  their  tribesmen.  Father  Jogiies 
had  left  a  small  valise  in  his  lodge.  This  was  regarded  as  a 
veritable  Pandora  box,  and  caused  the  most  abject  terror.  The 
Governor  and  the  priests  had  been  warned  that  it  would  be  un- 
safe to  proselytize  among  the  Iroquois ;  and,  on  his  previous  visit 
as  an  ambassador,  Jogues  is  said  not  to  have  worn  his  soutane, 
and  to  have  forborne  preaching  the  tenets  of  Christianity.  On 
his  return  with  the  avowed  purpose  of  persuading  the  Iroquois  to 
accept  the  gospel  and  repudiate  their  medicine  men,  his  reward 
was  martyrdom.  In  this  case,  as  often  since,  the  preaching  that 
was  meant  to  bring  peace  brought  a  sword. 

The  treaty  of  peace  and  the  temporary  security  of  theNipissing 
and  Ottawa  route  made  the  season  of  1645  3-  prosperous  one. 
The  prosperity,  however,  was  short-lived,  for  the  treaty  be- 
tween the  company  and  the  habitants,  though  it  promised 
great  things,  was  really  productive  of  more  heartburning 
and  dissension  than  profit  to  the  people  at  large.  We  have 
seen  that,  at  the  outset,  there  was  misunderstanding  as  to  the  pur- 
pose of  the  treaty  and  the  extent  of  its  provisions.  Then  a 
question  was  raised  as  to  the  relation  of  the  Jesuit  Fathers  to  the 
new  company,  and  this  had  hardly  been  settled  when  a  revolt  in 
Quebec  arose  against  Mons.  Noel  Juchereau  de  Chastelet,  the  gen- 
eral manager  of  the  local  company.  Certain  leaders  of  the  people, 
— whether  self-constituted  or  elected,  is  uncertain — got  up  an 
agitation  in  January,  1646,  against  de  Chastelet  himself,  charging 
him  witli  riotous  living  and  neglect  of  their  interests.  To  please 
such  an  ill-assorted  body  of  traders  as  those  composing  the  new 
company  must  have  been  as  difficult  a  task  as  it  would  be  to  satis- 
fy a  communistic  society.  Mons.  Robineau,  attached  to  the 
Governor's  household,  was  one  of  the  ringleaders,  and  gave  his 
Excellency  a  warrant  for  taking  severe  measures  against  the  mal- 
contents. The  agitation  subsided  under  coercive  treatment,  and 
owing  to  the  impossibility  of  securing  united  action  on  the  part 
of  a  scattered  population,  destitute  of  political  organization,  and 


THE    COLONISTS   DISSATISFIED.  287 

vvitliont  any  real  comnnmity  of  interest.  The  result  was  inevit- 
al)le,  for  the  majority  of  the  population  were  under  the  influence 
of  the  priests ;  and  they,  on  principle,  opposed  any  revolt  against 
constituted  authority.  They  may,  besides,  have  considered  this 
agitation  as  a  protest  against  the  settlement  arrived  at  through 
their  arbitration  in  the  September  previous. 

Though  the  rebellious  movement  had  been  suppressed  for 
the  moment,  the  spirit  of  revolt  had  been  excited,  not  only 
against  trade  monopoly,  but  against  political  nonentity.  The 
agitation  soon  bore  fruit.  The  summer  of  1646  was  profitable. 
Eighty  canoes  arrived  at  the  trading  post  of  Three  Rivers,  and 
Father  Lalemant  says  that  the  share  of  the  people's  company  was 
160  poin^ons  of  beaver  skins  as  against  98  of  the  year  before. 
The  poin^on  weighed  200  pounds,  and  the  value  per  pound  was 
ten  francs.  But  no  one  was  satisfied.  Those  who  acted  as  man- 
agers for  the  company  wanted  higher  pay,  and  could  not  obtain  it. 
The  Jesuits  considered  that  tlie  1,200  francs  allowed  them  for 
each  of  their  missions  of  Quebec.  Three  Rivers  and  the  Georgian 
Bay  was  insufficient.  Finally,  all  who  were  not  directly  employed 
by  the  new  company,  or  who  derived  no  benefit  from  it,  were  its 
awowed  and  open  enemies.  The  only  remedy  seemed  to  lie  in  an 
appeal  for  a  revision  of  the  treaty,  and  also  for  some  measure  of 
representative  government  for  the  people  of  the  colony.  To  secure 
these  ends  an  influential  delegation  sailed  with  the  fleet  on  the  first 
of  October.  Father  Quentin  went  to  advocate  the  rights  and  in- 
terests of  his  order.  The  others  were  Robert  Hache,  M.  de 
Maisonneuve,  M.  Giffard  and  M.  Tronquet,  each  probably  view- 
ing the  situation  from  his  own  standpoint,  but  all  alike  anxious 
for  some  betterment  of  existing  conditions.  With  the  sailing  of 
the  fleet  darkness,  as  regards  news,  settles  down  on  the  colony. 

An  event  occurred  this  year  (1646)  which  was  destined  to 
have  results  beyond  what  could  then  be  foreseen.  An  alliance 
was  concluded  with  three  of  the  Algonquin  tribes  occupying  the 
forests  between  the  St.  Lawrence  and  the  seaboard  to  the 
south,  the  Kanibas,  the  Etchemins,  and  the  Micmacs.  They 
sought  the  assistance  of  France  against  the  Iroquois,  and 
against    a    still    more    aggressive     foe,    the    colonists    of    New 


288  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

England.  They  had  already  learned  some  of  the  rudiments 
of  Christianity  from  Capuchin  monks,  who  had  established  a  mis- 
sion on  the  headwaters  of  the  Kennebec.  They  soon  became 
docile  pupils  of  the  Jesuits,  who  in  time  converted  the  whole 
of  the  tribes,  and  brought  them  so  completely  under  their  influence 
that  they  became  a  powerful  and  serviceable  fighting  force  against 
the  inhabitants  of  the  adjacent  English  colonies.  Quebec  was  their 
rallying  point,  and  their  trade  therefore,  whatever  it  amounted  to, 
was  tributary  to  Quebec.  As  spiritual  adviser  of  this  new  native 
confederation,  and  at  the  same  time  as  a  diplomatic  agent — for 
his  double  mission  was  to  convert  the  tribes  and  consolidate  them 
as  allies  into  a  political  confederacy — an  extremely  capable  man 
was  appointed  in  the  person  of  Father  Gabriel  Druillettes.  We 
shall  meet  him  again  as  ambassador  from  the  Governor  of  Canada 
to  Winthrop,  the  Governor  of  Massachusetts. 

During  the  following  winter  the  people  of  Quebec  needed  all 
the  cheer  they  could  get  from  favorable  facts  or  hopeful  fan- 
cies, for  the  gloom  of  impending  calamity  filled  every  heart,  how- 
ever bravely — like  cheerful  French  folk  that  they  were — they 
might  be  able  to  face  trouble  with  a  laugh  or  a  bon  mot.  In  the 
June  following  (1647)  the  news  reached  Quebec  of  the  death 
of  Father  Jogues,  which  had  occurred  in  October  of  the  pre- 
vious year.  All  hope  of  peace  with  the  Iroquois,  it  was  clearly 
seen,  had  to  be  abandoned.  Nevertheless,  during  that  summer  no 
very  atrocious  acts  of  hostility,  compared  at  least  with  what  fol- 
lowed, were  perpetrated  by  that  nation.  They  burned  Fort  Riche- 
lieu, which  in  overconfidence  had  been  abandoned  the  previous  au- 
tumn; and  they  conmienced  their  campaign  of  annihilation  by 
selecting  for  their  first  victims  the  Algonquin  tribes  of  the  Ot- 
tawa. The  anxiety  of  the  colonists  would  have  been  insupport- 
able, had  they  not  been  encouraged  by  the  hope  that  their  delegates 
would  succeed  in  securing  some  slight  measure  of  self-govern- 
ment from  the  home  authorities,  and  that  this  might  place  it 
in  their  power  to  provide  for  their  own  protection.  On  the 
23rd  of  June  the  first  ships  arrived,  and  must  have  brought 
news  of  the  negotiation,  and  probably  of  its  result,  though 
the   regulations   were   not    promulgated   by   the   King   in    Coun- 


A    NEW    CONSTITUTION.  289 

cil  until  March  27th  (1647),  after  the  saihng  of  the  ship. 
These  were  designed  to  protect  the  people  against  the  of- 
ficers of  their  own  company  no  less  than  against  the  agents 
of  the  One  Hundred  Associates.  Each  of  the  three  towns  of  Que- 
bec, Three  Rivers  and  Montreal  was  to  select  a  syndic  who  should 
hold  office  for  three  years.  In  this  respect  the  Constitution  simply 
confirmed  the  concession  stated  by  some  historians  to  have  been 
made  in  1645.  These  syndics  and  the  admiral  of  the  fleet  were 
admitted  to  the  Council  to  state  the  wants  of  their  people  and  the 
interests  they  represented,  but  were  not  allowed  even  a  deliberative 
voice.  The  Council  itself  was  composed  of  the  Governor  and — 
until  a  Bishop  should  be  created — the  Superior  of  the  Jesuits' 
house  in  Quebec,  together  with  the  Governor  of  the  Island  of 
Montreal.  In  the  absence  of  the  Governor  and  the  Governor  of 
Montreal,  their  lieutenants  were  to  represent  them.  The  Council 
was  ordered  to  meet  in  the  Company's  warehouse  (la  maison 
commune  ou  est  estably  le  magasin  de  Quebecq.)*  The  Council 
had  the  right  to  appoint  the  Admiral,  Captain,  and  other 
officers  of  the  trading  fleet ;  but  no  elected  member  of  Coun- 
cil or  official  might  hold  office  for  more  than  three  years. 
The  Council  also  had  the  right  to  audit  the  company's  ac- 
counts, and  to  fix  the  prices  of  all  articles  bought  or  used 
in  bartering.  The  habitants  were  permitted  to  exchange 
their  farm  products  with  the  Indians  for  furs,  but  all  peltries  had 
still  to  be  turned  in  to  the  company's  store  at  a  price  determined 
by  the  Council.  Only  the  company's  ships  might  enter  the  river, 
and  their  cargoes  must  be  sold  in  France.  From  the  proceeds  of 
the  sale  in  France  the  following  deductions  were  to  be  made : 
25,000  francs  for  the  payment  of  the  Governor  and  the  civil  offi- 
cers of  Quebec  and  Three  Rivers,  the  officers  and  soldiers,  and  for 
feeding  the  little  army  of  seventy  men ;  10,000  francs  for  main- 
taining the  civil  and  military  establishment  of  Montreal,  and  5,000 
francs  for  the  support  of  the  Jesuit  establishment.  The  budget 
was  certainly  not  an  extravagant  one ;  but  as,  in  addition  to  the 
payment  of  these  40,000  francs,  the  company's  stores  and  officials 

*The  full  text  of  this  first  constitutional  charter  of  New  France  is  given  in 
the  "Revue  Canadienne,"  Montreal,  1894,  page  353. 


290  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

In  Canada  and  in  France,  and  the  whole  fleet  of  ships,  liad  to  be 
maintained,  the  revenue  from  fnrs,  especiaUy  in  time  of  war,  or 
in  bad  seasons,  when  the  snpply  was  short,  must  necessarily  have 
been  small.  Hence  the  temptation  to  smuggle.  And  that  smug- 
gling was  rife  is  curiously  illustrated  by  an  entry  in  the  Jesuits' 
Journal,  of  the  19th  of  the  month  following  the  promulgation  of 
the  new  regulation.  The  treatment  of  the  fur  trade  at  Sillery,  we 
thus  discover,  had  assumed  the  proportions  of  a  case  of  conscience, 
which  had  been  gravely  deliberated  by  the  Superior,  Father  Lale- 
mant,  and  his  two  predecessors  in  office,  Feathers  le  Jeune  and 
Vimont.  It  was  open  to  doubt  whether  furs  should  be  made  an 
object  of  traffic  M  any  establishment  supported  for  essentially  reli- 
gious and  missionary  purposes.  But  as  it  was  distinctly  conducive 
to  the  popularity  and  the  success  of  the  mission  that  it  should  be  a 
market  for  peltries,  it  was  determined  to  permit  the  trade.  Then 
the  question  arose  whether  all  the  furs  so  purchased  had  to  pass 
through  the  companj^'s  store.  The  regulations  required  it,  but — - 
the  Company  was  not  always  liberal  in  its  scale  of  payment.  The 
decision  come  to  on  this  knotty  point  was  :  First,  that  if  the  store 
w'ould  ofifer  reasonable  prices,  those  who  bought  these  furs  were  in 
conscience  bound  not  to  divert  them  elsewhere  (that  could  only 
mean  not  to  smuggle  them  out  of  the  country).  Secondly,  if  the 
store  were  unreasonable,  then  one  might  practice  deception  with  a 
good  conscience  or  without  incurring  sin  ("dissimuler  en  con- 
science"), inasmuch  as  the  people  had  a  natural  right,  and  per- 
mission from  the  King,  to  engage  in  trade.  Thirdly,  wdiether 
reasonable  or  not,  the  Jesuits  must  not  engage  in  trade. 

A  month  before  this  260  pounds  of  beaver  skins  had  been 
seized  in  the  chamber  of  Mons.  le  Prieur.  the  chaplain  of 
the  Ursulines.  He  had  made  no  secret  of  his  having  them,  and 
openly  boasted  he  would  not  sell  them  to  the  store  unless  at  a 
good  price.  This  the  store  declined  to  pay.  They  were  there- 
fore confiscated.  It  is  consequently  evident  that  the  only  alter- 
native to  selling  to  the  store  at  the  authorized  prices  was  smug- 
gling. Channels  for  smuggling  had  been  opened  years  before,  to 
evade  the  trading  prohibition  of  the  old  company,  and  these  had 
been  kept  open  by  the  habitants,  who  wished  to  escape  the  im- 


DELEGATES  SENT   TO  FRANCE.  29I 

posts  laid  on  their  goods  by  the  new  company.  The  colonists  had 
in  reality  profited  little  by  the  change.  The  old  company  retained 
all  their  seignorial  rights,  so  that  free  land  was  forbidden  them, 
and  now  trade  was  oppressed  by  so  many  burdens  that  it  availed 
them  little  or  nothing.  Instead  of  being  the  prey  of  the  company 
of  New  France,  they  were  the  victims  of  their  own  officials,  and 
there  was  little  to  choose  between  them,  as  the  sequel  showed. 
One  trading  company  was  load  enough  for  any  struggling  colony 
to  support.     Two  proved  insupportable. 

The  same  ships  which  brought  the  news  of  the  deliberations 
brought  also  the  first  horse  imported  into  Canada.  It  was  a 
present  from  the  people  to  their  Governor.  The  two  longest  roads 
or  trails  were  to  Sillery,  even  then  known  as  the  Grande  AUee, 
and  that  following  the  present  Ste.  Genevieve  hill  to  the  Jesuits' 
house  of  Notre  Dames  des  Anges.  Oxen  and  cows  had  probably 
been  used  as  beasts  of  burden  on  such  narrow  trails,  for  the  horse 
was  not  introduced  into  Canada  for  nearly  thirty  years  after  the 
establishment  of  the  colony ;  but  so  great  a  favorite  with  the  in- 
habitants did  the  nobler  animal  become,  that  it  was  propagat-" 
ed  to  the  detriment  of  the  more  profitable  horned  cattle.  When 
for  two  years  prior  to  the  siege  of  Quebec,  in  1759,  famine  threat- 
ened the  inhabitants,  Montcalm  said  that  horse  fiesh  was  eaten  at 
his  table  in  every  form,  with  the  exception  of  horse  soup.  Bigot 
reported  that  it  was  to  the  interest  of  the  colony  to  slaughter  3,000 
horses,  instead  of  that  number  of  horned  cattle. 

Impatient  to  exercise  their  limited  functions  of  government, 
the  people  of  Quebec  sent  a  deputation  to  the  Governor  on  the 
29th  of  June,  asking  permission  to  elect  their  syndics ;  but,  as 
the  formal  order  in  Council  had  not  been  received,  the  request 
was  refused.  It  was  not  until  the  21st  of  July  that  they  were 
allowed  to  elect  their  representatives.  The  choice  of  the  citizens 
fell  on  Mons.  Bourdon,  whose  first  act  was  to  request  the  Gover- 
nor to  assume  control  of  the  Company  of  the  Inhabitants  and 
relieve  the  directors  and  ofificers  of  that  function.  Evidently 
feeling  ran  high  against  their  own  board,  for  we  find  another  de- 
putation proceeding  to  France  to  solicit  amelioration  of  the  com- 
pany's conditions.     It  consisted  of  Mons.  d'Aillebout  and  Mons.' 


292  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

Maisonneuve,  as  partners  in  the  Montreal  company,  and  Mons. 
Noel  Juchereau  de  Chastelet,  the  company's  cliief  clerk.  In  the 
absence  of  the  latter  his  post  was  conferred  on  Mons.  Bourdon. 
De  Chastelet  never  returned.  Whether  tlie  dissatisfaction  was 
due  to  actual  maladministration,  or  to  disappointment  at  the 
meagre  results  of  a  change  from  which  so  nuich  had  heen  hoped, 
it  is  impossible  to  determine.  If  the  Company  of  the  One 
Hundred  Associates  could  not  make  money,  there  is  no 
reason  to  suppose  that  the  liabifaiits'  company  fared 
better,  encumbered  as  it  was,  not  only  with  the  administra- 
tive charges  incident  to  its  own  maintenance,  but  also  with 
what  may  be  called  an  excise  for  the  support  of  the  colony.  The 
incentive  to  individual  energy  which  individual  profit  supplies  was 
lacking.  Remedy  after  remedy  was  applied  as  one  after  another 
failed,  but  never  the  only  remedy  which  could  have  made  the  city 
prosperous — that  of  committing  to  the  inhabitants,  as  free  men,  the 
right  of  each  to  think  for  himself  and  act  for  himself,  within  the 
limits  of  respect  for  what  was  due  to  others. 
..  As  the  summer  advanced  the  depredations  of  the  Iroquois 
became  so  menacing  that  grave  anxiety  was  felt  for  the  safety  of 
Sillery ;  and  the  half  Christianized  Indians  could  not  be  restrained 
from  venting  their  rage  on  the  few  captives  they  made,  according 
to  their  immemorial  usage.  Montmagny  was  sorely  perplexed. 
Either  he  had  to  tolerate  customs  of  hideous  barbarity  or  lose 
control  of  his  fickle  allies  in  a  crisis  when  their  defection  might 
be  fatal.  When,  early  in  September,  the  Sillery  warriors 
brought  in  an  Iroquois  captive,  he  claimed  him,  and  for  more  than 
a  week  protected  him  from  their  fiendish  hands,  but  at  length  was 
constrained  to  hand  him  over  to  his  tormentors,  who,  by  way  of 
compromise,  cut  short  his  agony  after  one  hour's  torture.  The 
Jesuit  Fathers,  who  did  what  they  could  to  mitigate  his  sufifering, 
had  the  satisfaction  of  baptizing  the  poor  fellow,  thus  horribly 
executed  in  a  manner  most  repulsive  to  their  principles — for  there 
had  never  been  a  stain  of  Dominicanism  on  their  milder  system, 
however  absolute  it  was  in  matters  of  faith. 

With  Indians  lurking  at  every  commanding  point  on  the  Ot- 
tawa route,  few  furs  were  coming  to  the  habitant  warehouse,  and 


RECALL   OF    MONTMAGNY.  293 

yet  the  new  company  was  bound  to  support  both  the  State  and  the 
Church.  The  revenues  of  the  old  company  from  the  Sague- 
nay  country  must  have  been  more  scanty  still.  It  was  a  dreary 
winter,  therefore,  that  of  1647- 1648.  The  air  was  full  of  alarming 
rumors,  and  the  situation  fraught  with  much  real  danger;  but  no 
heart  fainted  while  there  were  men  of  heroic  mould,  like  Chas- 
tillon,  willing  to  face  all  the  dangers  of  a  journey  through  a 
country  infested  by  Iroquois  to  carry  the  Governor's  message 
of  hope  and  encouragement  to  the  Hurons  on  the  far  distant 
Georgian  Bay.  The  sliglit  reliance  to  be  put  on  Algonquin 
bravery  was  forcing  itself  very  painfully  on  the  minds  of  the 
colonists.  Noel's  band,  for  instance,  started  with  the  usual  Indian 
ostentation  and  brag  from  Sillery  in  June,  but  returned  with 
big  words  and  no  scalps  in  July.  As  Father  Lalemant  remarks,  the 
very  Iroquois  prisoners  laughed  at  these  preparations  for  mimic 
war,  which  had  also  become  a  farce  in  the  eyes  of  the  French. 
Apprehension  was  therefore  rife,  though  no  one  dreamt  in  his 
gloomiest  moments  of  what  was  happening  in  the  Huron  country 
in  that  same  summer,  when  the  first  act  in  the  terrible  drama  of 
the  extermination  of  the  Hurons  was  being  enacted,  and  the  noble 
Father  Daniel  preferred  to  die  as  a  martyr  with  his  dusky  flock 
rather  than  deprive  them  of  his  ministrations  in  their  hour  of 
supreme  need. 

The  arrival  of  the  fleet— the  great  event  of  the  season  to 
the  Ouebecer — brought  several  surprises.  Mons.  d'Aillebout 
had  gone  over  the  previous  summer  with  Mons.  de  Chastelet,  the 
Commissaire-Geniral  of  the  inhabitants,  to  lay  the  grievances  of 
the  people  before  the  Royal  Council.  Mons.  d'Aillebout  returned 
in  command  of  the  fleet,  with  his  commission  as  Governor  in  place 
of  the  Sieur  de  Montmagny.  De  Repentigny  had  been  deprived 
temporarily  of  the  command  as  Admiral  on  account  of  the  dis- 
approval he  had  expressed  of  some  of  the  new  measures ;  but  lie 
was  loyally  returning  in  his  own  fleet  as  a  passenger,  when  he 
died  on  the  voyage.  Thus  two  of  the  most  prominent  figures  of 
these  early  days — de  Chastelet  and  de  Repentigny — disappear. 
D'Aillebout  and  de  Chastelet  had  secured  notable  concessions, 
which,  if  they  had  been  literally  and  liberally  carried  into  execu- 


294  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEV^ENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

tion,  would  liave  mitigated  the  hardships  of  the  people.  The 
syndics  were  now  empowered  to  vote,  whereas  previously  they 
were  merely  consultatory  members.  The  company's  contribution  to 
the  Governor's  salary  was  reduced  to  I0,(X)0  francs,  and  it 
was  not  obliged  to  maintain  more  than  twelve  soldiers  for 
the  defense  of  Quebec.  The  Governors  of  Montreal  and  Three 
Rivers  were  to  be  paid  3,000  francs  each,  and  the  company 
was  to  support  six  soldiers  in  each  of  these  towns.  But  the  19,000 
francs  thus  deducted  for  services  was  to  be  expended  in  a  flying 
column  of  forty  men,  destined  for  the  protection  of  weak  points 
and  also  to  serve  as  escort  for  volunteer  traders  to  the  Huron  coun- 
try. The  edict  in  fact  constituted  a  Charter  of  Rights,  conferring 
on  the  Council  the  power  of  regulating  trade,  of  declaring  war  and 
making  peace,  of  establishing  courts  of  justice,  and  organizing  a 
police  force.  But  it  did  not  abolish  the  landed  privileges  of  the 
old  company,  nor  did  it  introduce  or  suggest  the  machinery  for 
rendering  the  privileges  it  conferred  operative.  The  provisions 
made  for  the  military  protection  of  the  colony,  and  of  its  helpless 
allies,  from  the  depredations  of  the  thousands  of  Iroquois  braves, 
armed,  in  even  greater  numbers  than  formerly,  with  arquebuses, 
were  ludicrously  insufficient ;  and  trade  was  not  relieved  from  the 
insupportable  restrictions  dictated  by  the  parsimonious  policy  of 
the  mother  country,  whicli  expected  to  I)uild  up  a  thriving  colony 
without  incurring  any  expense. 

The  recall  of  the  Chevalier  Montmagny,  who  had  been  re- 
appointed Governor  in  1645,  ^t  a  salary  of  3,000  livres,  was  a 
great  surprise.  In  the  short  interval  the  policy  of  the  home 
government  is  said  to  have  been  changed  by  the  refusal  of  de 
Poince,  Governor  of  the  French  West  India  Islands,  to  resign  his 
appointment  when  ordered  home.  It  was  then  decided  to  reduce 
all  gubernatorial  appointments  to  three  years,  and  de  Montmagny 
was  one  of  the  first  to  be  brought  luidcr  the  rule. 

His  administration  had  been  a  failure,  if  judged  by  the  pro- 
gress of  the  colony.  The  most  energetic  of  Governors  would 
have  been  crippled  by  the  position  in  which  he  was  placed 
of  subserviency  to  a  commercial  company,  which  would 
neither     do     anything    itself,    nor    permit    anyone    else    to    do 


DIFFICULTIES  OF   MONTMAGNy's   POSITION.  295 

anything;  yet  we  do  not  learn  that  Montniagny  complained. 
He  was  a  Knight  of  Malta,  and  therefore  under  ecclesiasti- 
cal vows,  as  was  also  the  Lieutenant-Governor,  Mons.  de 
risle.  The  Jesuit  Fathers  were  his  devoted  associates  anc' 
counsellors.  He  was  avowedly  actuated  by  an  ardent  zeal 
for  the  conversion  of  the  natives,  and  it  is  not  impossible  that 
the  welfare  of  the  colony — in  a  commercial  or  mercantile  sense — 
was  inferior  in  importance,  in  his  estimation,  to  the  evangeliza- 
tion of  the  aborigines.  As  this  was  ostensibly  the  prime  object 
which  the  Crown  of  France  had  kept  in  view  from  the  time  of 
Francis  I.  onward,  Montmagny  can  hardly  be  blamed  for  acting 
up  to  the  letter  of  his  instructions.  He  was  active  and  pains- 
taking, answering  promptly  every  summons  to  the  point  of  dan- 
ger, but  he  was  not  keen  in  pushing  commerce.  Olivier,  the 
forerunner  of  that  wonderful  band  of  Canadian  explorers  who 
penetrated  to  the  recesses  of  the  northern  half  of  the  continent 
generations  before  any  English-speaking  men  attempted  to  follow 
in  their  footsteps,  had  sighted  Lake  Superior,  but  his  story  of  that-, 
inland  sea  fell  on  deaf  ears.*  The  range  of  the  Governor's  activity 
was  almost  confined  to  the  river  between  Quebec  and  Montreal. 
With  the  small  white  force  at  his  command,  he  may  well  have  been 
cowed  by  the  overwhelming  power  of  the  Iroquois.  But  if 
he  could  not  defend  himself  and  his  allies,  five  hundred  miles 
away  on  the  Georgian  Bay,  his  true  course  would  have  been  to 
draw  them  in,  to  concentrate  his  forces,  and  oppose  a  bold  face 
to  the  insulting  Iroquois  challenge.  The  French  alliance  with  the 
Hurons  and  their  acceptance  of  Christianity,  which  made  all  hope 
of  future  amalgamation  with  the  Confederacy  impossible,  were 
the  aggravating  causes  of  a  war  in  conducting  which  he  dis- 
played neither  energy  as  a  general  nor  shrewdness  as  a  politician. 
He  was  neither  a  Champlain  nor  a  Frontenac.  He  lacked  the 
enthusiasm,  the  eager  activity  and  personal  initiative  which  im- 
pelled Champlain  to  take  the  field,  and  which  won  for  him  the 
honor  of  being  the  first  white  man  to  explore  Lake  Champlain 
and  to  cleave  the  waters  of  Lakes  Huron  and  Ontario.     More- 

*The  poor  fellow  was  drowned  near  Sillery,  for,  like  many  others  who  have 
exposed  themselves  to  danger  i.i  their  explorations  by  water,  he  could  not  swim. 


^6  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY, 

over,  when  Champlain  was  dissatisfied  with  the  conduct  of  the 
colonial  officers  in  France,  he  went  thither  to  argue  his  case  in 
person.  Had  Frontenac  been  in  Montmagny's  place,  his  military 
instinct  would  have  driven  him  to  devise  some  plan  for  using 
the  whole  military  strength  of  the  Huron  nation  for  their  own 
protection  and  that  of  the  colonists.  Montmagny's  deplorable 
trustfulness,  or  irresolution,  resulted  in  the  extermination  of  the 
Hurons  and  in  dwarfing  and  arresting  the  growth  of  the  colony. 
The  lethargy  of  the  company,  due  in  great  measure  to  their  in- 
solvency, was  no  doubt  primarily  responsible  for  the  moribund 
condition  of  the  colony.  But  a  man  of  more  resources  would  either 
have  compelled  the  government  of  France  and  the  company  to 
fulfil  their  obligations,  or  taken  some  steps  to  organize 
the  fighting  material,  white  and  Indian,  within  his  reach  for 
the  purpose  of  checking  the  common  foe.  At  that  time  the 
Hurons  were  still  a  powerful  tribe  of  undoubted  bravery.  Armed 
with  guns,  they  would  have  been  a  match,  with  the  aid  of  the 
colonists,  for  the  Iroquois.  The  Jesuits  estimated  their  number 
at  over  30,000,  which  would  have  given  them  at  least  4,000  war- 
riors. When  rescued  from  the  Georgian  Bay  they  were  a  tremb- 
ling, dispirited  remnant,  worthless  as  fighting  material. 

The  most  valuable  work  Montniagny  did  was  in  effecting  an  al- 
liance with  the  Algonquin  tribes  lying  between  the  St.  Lawrence 
and  Acadia  and  Maine,  and  welding  them  into  a  political  unit  to 
be  used  in  opposing  Iroquois  aggression  and  New  England  ex- 
pansion. This  was  a  wise  and  long-sighted  move,  which  he  was 
enabled  successfully  to  make  through  the  agency  of  his  ecclesi- 
astical coadjutors.  The  political  assistance  of  the  Jesuits  was 
never  used  in  Canada  to  greater  advantage  than  in  thus  rais- 
ing, without  any  ostensible  hostility  of  purpose,  a  bulwark 
against  the  advance  of  the  English  towards  the  St.  Lawrence. 
It  proved  almost  as  insurmountable  as  that  which  the  Iroquois 
alliance  with  the  Dutch  and  English  presented  against  any  en- 
croachment of  the  French  to  the  east  of  Lakes  Ontario  and  Erie. 
In  these  events,  and  in  the  narrow  field  of  Canadian  politics,  we 
can  more  clearly  detect  the  strong  and  the  weak  points  of  ecclesi- 
astical statecraft,  and  trace  more   distinctly  the  results  of  the 


SLOW   PROGRESS  OF  THE  COLONY.  297 

confusion  of  things  spiritual  and  things  temporal  in  the  history 
of  Jesuitism  than  would  be  possible  in  the  more  involved  drama 
of  European  intrigue. 

The  Iroquois  war  and  financial  stagnation  combined  to  arrest 
immigration.  Only  nineteen  families  are  known  to  have  immi- 
grated during  the  four  years  prior  to  Montmagny's  removal. 
Suite  gives  a  list,  which  he  considers  approximately  correct,  of 
120  heads  of  families,  as  constituting  the  entire  population  of 
Canada  in  1645  The  number  is  small,  but  they  came  from  the 
best  stock  of  the  very  best  provinces  of  northern  France ;  every 
man  brought  his  helpmate  with  him,  and  not  a  girl  of  marriage- 
able age  remained  a  spinster  in  the  colony. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

Governor  d^Aillebout's  Administration  and  the  Negotia- 
tion for  a  Reciprocity  Treaty  with  New  England. 

It  may  not  have  been  a  coincidence  that  the  dismissal  of  Mont- 
magny  and  his  replacement  as  Governor  by  Monsieur  d'Aille- 
boiit,  after  the  appointment  had  been  offered,  and,  so  rumor  said, 
refused  by  iMaisonneuve  himself,  followed  close  on  visits  by  both 
the  leaders  of  the  Alontreal  colony  to  France,  but  there  is  nothing 
in  the  transaction,  or  in  the  known  character  of  Maisonneuve,  to 
warrant  a  suspicion  of  intrigue.  He  doubtless  believed  that 
the  safety  of  the  colony  was  involved  in  the  maintenance  of  I\Ion- 
treal,  whereas  from  the  first  Montmagny  liad  opposed  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  Montreal  colony,  giving  as  his  reason  that  the 
forces  at  his  disposal  for  repelling  the  Iroquois  were  small,  and 
that  he  thought  it  waser  to  concentrate  than  to  scatter.  Three 
RiverG  was  a  vulnerable  point.  Whether  wisely  or  not,  we  have 
seen  that  he  abandoned  the  fort  at  the  mouth  of  the  Richelieu. 
When  Maisonneuve  arrived  in  the  autumn  of  1640  trouble  was 
already  brewing.  Montmagny,  who  was  aware  of  the  fact,  did 
his  best  to  persuade  him  to  establish  an  Indian  mission 
near  Quebec,  offering  him  the  Island  of  Orleans  in  lieu  of 
the  Island  of  Montreal,  but  to  no  purpose.  The  ostensible  reason 
for  the  recall  of  Montmagny  was  the  necessity  of  complying  with 
the  rule  fixing  the  gubernatorial  term  of  office  at  three  years ;  yet 
he  had  been  reappointed  under  this  rule  in  1645. 

Calamity  so  terrible  soon  overtook  the  colony,  that  the  kind- 
hearted  Knight  of  Malta,  in  his  retirement  in  France,  must  have 
pitied  his  unfortunate  successor,  though  he  was  too  true  a  soldier 
to  rejoice  in  his  escape  either  from  danger  or  from  responsibility. 
His  retirement  from  the  stage  of  active  life  was  so  complete  that 
historv  never  again  gives  us  a  clear  glimpse  of  the  man  who,  if 
he  did  not  frame  the  policy  under  which  New  France  was  to  be 


Portrait  Supposed  to  be  of  M.  Louis  d'  Aillehout. 
By  tlie  kind  permission  of  Mr.  Norman  Neilson. 


a 


\ 


i 


A   NEW   CONSTITUTION.  299 

governed,  was  the  agent  who  put  that  pohcy  first  into  motion,  and 
who  transmitted  the  Indian  equivalent  of  his  name — (Jnontio — 
(Anglicc,  Great  Alountain) — to  his  successors. 

During  d'Aillebout's  term  of  office,  which  extended  to  1651, 
events  were  not  conducive  to  the  growth  of  the  town  or  of  the 
colony.  Three  incidents,  however,  rendered  his  administration 
memorable.  These  were  :  First,  the  inauguration  of  the  more  liberal 
constitution  which  he  brought  out  in  his  portfolio.  Secondly,  the 
tragedy  on  the  Georgian  Bay,  which  resulted  in  the  extermination 
of  the  Hurons  as  a  powerful  nation,  and  the  transplanting  of  the 
small  remnant  to  Quebec.  Thirdly,  the  continuation  of  the  nego- 
tiation with  New  England  for  a  commercial  treaty,  and  an  of- 
fensive and  a  defensive  alliance  against  the  Iroquois,  which  had 
been  inaugurated  by  Montmagny. 

The  new  constitution  did  not  enlarge  to  any  notable  extent  the 
prerogatives  already  enjoyed  by  the  people.  The  Council  of 
1647  was  composed  of  the  Governor,  the  Superior  of  the 
Jesuits  or  the  Bishop,  and  the  Governor  of  Montreal,  with,  as  act- 
ive members,  the  Governor  of  the  Fleet  and  the  syndics  of  Que- 
bec, Three  Rivers  and  Montreal.  The  new  Council  of  1648  was 
composed  of  the  Governor,  the  Superior  of  the  Jesuits  or  the 
Bishop,  the  ex-Governor  of  the  Colony,  and  in  his  absence  an  in- 
habitant to  be  chosen  by  the  colonists ;  two  inhabitants,  to  hold  of- 
fice for  three  years,  to  be  chosen  by  the  Council  and  the  syndics  of 
Quebec,  Three  Rivers  and  Montreal.  The  two  popular  representa- 
tives and  the  substitute  for  the  ex-Governor,  in  the  first  Council, 
were  the  Sieurs  Chavigny,  Godefroy  and  Giffard,  all  three  men  of 
note  and  of  property.  If  d'Aillebout  really  solicited  the  appoint- 
ment of  Governor  when  he  went  to  France,  as  one  of  the  delegates 
sent  by  the  colonists  to  plead  for  reform,  he  was  disinterested 
in  procuring  a  reduction  of  the  Governor's  salary  to  10,000 
livres,  and  of  his  free  freight  from  70  to  12  tons,  and  of  his  body- 
guard to  twelve  soldiers.  Corresponding  reductions,  as  we  have 
seen,  were  made  in  the  salaries  and  perquisites  of  the  governors  of 
Montreal  and  Three  Rivers. 

The  diversion  created  by  the  arrival  of  the  Governor  and  the 
promulgation  of  the  new  constitution,  followed  by  the  appearance 


300        QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

at  Three  Rivers,  after  two  years'  intermission,  of  two  liiindred 
and  fifty  Huron  canoes,  loaded  with  furs,  encouraged  people  to 
believe  that  Montmagny's  dread  of  the  Iroquois  War  was  an  ex- 
aggerated apprehension.  Ignorant  of  the  designs  of  their  foes,  the 
Indian  traders  started  back  from  Three  Rivers,  accompanied  by 
some  thirty  French  laymen  and  the  Jesuit  Fathers  Adrien  Gres- 
lon,  Adrien  Darau  and  Gabriel  Lalemant.  The  last-mentioned 
was  journeying  straight  to  his  death.  Elated  by  a  victory  they 
had  gained  over  a  band  of  Irocjuois  which  had  attacked  them  at 
Three  Rivers,  the  Hurons  considered  themselves  invincible,  and 
neglected  the  most  ordinary  precautions.  The  Irovquois,  on  the 
other  hand,  confident  of  their  power,  doomed  the  whole  nation 
to  extermination,  and  struck  the  first  fatal  blow  in  July,  1648, 
when  Father  Daniel  died  with  his  flock  in  the  mission  church  of 
8t.  Joseph.  The  second  blow  fell  in  the  following  March,  when 
the  Hurons  of  the  village  of  St.  Louis,  of  the  St.  Ignace  Mission, 
were  slaughtered  with  Fathers  Brebeuf  and  Lalemant,  who  were 
martyred  with  every  aggravation  of  horrid  cruelty.  But  of 
all  these  terrible  events;  of  the  death  of  their  dearest  personal 
friends,  and  the  destruction  of  their  most  cherished  hopes  of 
spreading  the  tenets  of  Christianity  and  the  power  of  France, 
through  the  agency  of  the  Huron  nation,  the  Jesuit  Fathers,  at 
their  headquarters  in  Quebec,  were  utterly  ignorant  until  July 
20,  when  the  following-  brief  entry  occurs  in  Father  Guillaume 
Lalemant's  Journal :  "During  the  night  we  received  the  sad  news 
of  the  destruction  of  the  Hurons  and  the  martyrdom  of  the  three 
fathers."  Full  details  were  brought  by  Father  Bressani  in  Sep- 
tember. The  havoc  wrought  among  the  Hurons  did  not,  how- 
ever, entirely  put  a  stop  to  trading,  for  with  him  were 
Huron  and  French  traders,  bringing  5,000  beaver  skins,  worth 
26,000  francs.  A  French  soldier  and  his  brother,  who  had  spent 
only  one  year  in  Huronia,  returned  loaded  down  with  747  pounds 
of  beaver,  worth  four  or  five  francs  the  pound.  The  incongruous 
mingling  of  tragedy  and  conmicrce  has,  however,  not  been  con- 
fined to  early  American  history. 

Giving  little  thought  to  the  peril   impending  over  the  Lake 


I 


HURON   VICTIMS  AND  JESUIT   MARTYRS.  3OI 

country,  society   at  Quebec   in   the  winter  of  1648-9  was  gayer 
than  usual,  for  the  vice  regal  ct)urt  was  at  last  presided  over  by 
a  lady — Madame    d'Aillebout.     Her   sister,    Madame    Philippine 
du  Boulogne,  hatl  accom})anied  her  from  Montreal,  but  at  once 
entered  the  Ursuline  convent  as  a  novice.     The  Governor's  wife, 
though  as  devoutly  disposed  towards  a  religious  life  as  her  sister, 
could  not  take  the  vows  unless  her  husband  also  entered  a  monas- 
tery.    She  therefore  waited  until  his  death  in  1660  before  trying 
the  experiment.    After  a  short  novitiate  she  abandoned  it ;  never- 
theless she  was  proof,  so  rumor  says,  against  the  matrimonial  at- 
tacks of  two  subsequent  governors.     We  can  picture  her  to  our- 
selves as  one  of  those  charming,  lively,  sympathetic  women  who 
can  be  sincerely  and  actively  religious  without  being  austere,  and 
gay  without  being  frivolous. 

Quebec  certainly  needed  all  the  consolation  and  courage 
which  religion,  the  sanguine,  happy  temperament  of  the 
Governor's  wife,  and  the  natural  lightheartedness  of  its 
people,  could  impart  to  support  it  through  the  trials  of 
the  next  two  years ;  for  the  policy  of  revenge  and  extermina- 
tion was  pursued  by  the  Iroquois  with  relentless  fury  and 
untiring  vigilance.  In  the  autumn  of  1649  Father  Charles  Garnier 
preferred  to  die  with  his  converts,  rather  than  escape  from  the 
bourgade  of  St.  Jean,  which  was  attacked  and  destroyed  when 
its  warriors  were  ai?-sent.  Perhaps  another  martyr  was  added 
to  the  list.  Father  Chabanel  was  Father  Garnier's  colleague  in 
the  St.  Jean  mission,  and  was  on  his  way  with  a  band  of  Hurons 
to  the  Sault  Ste.  Marie.  Fearing  at  night  the  approach  of  an 
enemy,  his  Huron  companions  fled  more  rapidly  than  he  could 
follow.  He  was  supposed  at  first  to  have  perished  from  cold  and 
hunger  in  the  forest,  but  subsequently  a  Huron  took  credit  for 
having  killed  him  in  revenge  for  the  untold  misery  his  order  had 
brought  upon  his  nation.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  a  most  pathetic 
proof  of  the  depth  of  conviction  with  which  the  Christian  teach- 
ings of  the  Jesuit  Fathers  had  imbued  their  converts,  that 
they  did  not  one  and  all  adopt  this  superstitious  explanation  of 
their  calamities,  and,  by  ridding  themselves,  in  the  same  summary 
manner,  of  the  supposed  evil  influence,  make  a  bid  for  the  favor  of 
20 


302  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

their  persecutors.  There  is,  in  fact,  no  positive  proof  that  Father 
Chabanel  did  thus  meet  his  death,  and  it  is  certain  that  none  other 
of  the  missionary  band  received  aught  else  than  protection  and 
reverence  at  the  hands  of  the  unhappy  fugitives. 

Some  of  the  Hurons  sought  refuge  with  friendly  tribes ;  some 
surrendered,  and  were  incorporated  into  the  families  of  their  con- 
querors ;  others  escaped  in  small  parties  to  the  St.  Lawrence  and 
joined  the  one  band  which  retained  any  semblance  of  national 
identity,  being  thus  brought  into  close  relation  with  the  city  of 
Quebec.  The  Jesuits  of  St.  Mary,  when  the  defence  of  that  mis- 
sion became  clearly  impossible,  induced  their  converts  and  the 
forty  stfculaircs — servants  who  had  pledged  themselves,  without 
taking  vows,  to  serve  for  life  in  menial  occupations  without  pay — 
to  seek  safety  on  tiie  Island  of  St.  Joseph,  now  called  Christian 
Island.  There  famine  and  disease  threatened  to  complete  the  work 
of  the  Iroquois  tomahawks.  In  despair  they  prayed  Father  Ra- 
guenau  in  1650  to  lead  them  to  Quebec.  He  consented,  and  with 
as  little  delay  and  as  profound  secrecy  and  silence  as  possible,  the 
members  of  the  mission  and  three  hundred  Huron  Christians 
started  on  their  dreary  pilgrimage  of  nearly  a  thousand  miles  by 
forest  trail,  lake  and  river.  Only  three  hundred ! — and  yet  Father 
Ragueneau  states  that  during  the  previous  year  he  and  his  fellow 
priests  baptized  more  than  three  thousand  Indians.  Ten  years 
previously  the  country  contained  from  eight  to  ten  thousand 
Hurons — one  estimate  mentions  20,000 — and  this  was  the  rem- 
nant!  Once,  on  their  perilous  march,  the  advance  guard  fell  back 
and  reported  that  they  had  heard  sounds  and  seen  traces  of  human 
beings.  These  proved  to  be  Father  Bressani  with  twenty 
Indians  and  forty  plucky  colonists,  hastening  to  the  relief 
of  their  fellow  countrymen  and  Indian  allies.  There  re- 
mained none  to  whom  human  hand  could  render  help  on 
the  once  populous  and  happy  shores  of  the  Georgian  Bay ; 
the  relief  party,  therefore,  joined  the  fugitives,  thus  com- 
posing a  force  too  strong  to  be  safely  attacked — for  no  warriors 
calculate  chances  more  accurately  than  Indian  braves,  and  none 
are  so  averse  to  attacking  against  odds.  After  fifty  days  of  toil- 
some journeying  they  reached  what  they  might  with  confidence 


PROPOSED  TREATY   WITH    NEW   ENGLAND.  303 

have  supposed  would  be  their  haven  of  refuge — Quebec.  They 
numbered  more  than  their  hosts.  Some  were  received  at  the  Hotel 
Dieu.  The  Ursulines  threw  their  convent  open  to  the  girls 
and  women.  The  wealthier  families  undertook  to  support  each  an 
Indian  family ;  but,  after  all  the  fountains  of  local  charity  had  been 
exhausted,  two  hundred  starving  creatures  were  left  to  the  kindly 
care  of  the  Jesuits,  whose  hands,  though  nearly  empty,  were  still 
held  forth  to  help  them.  Heavy  as  was  the  drain  which  the  hungry, 
helpless,  famine-stricken  fugitives  made  on  their  scanty  resources, 
they  had  to  prepare,  ere  winter  set  in,  for  the  probable  advent  of 
some  three  hundred  more— the  remnant  of  the  race — who,  it  was 
hoped,  would  succeed  in  eluding  the  snares  laid  for  them  by  their 
relentless  enemies. 

The  third  event  of  note  in  Governor  d'Aillebout's  administra- 
tion was  Father  Druillettes'  mission  to  New  England. 

It  has  already  been  mentioned  that  in  1645  M.  de  Mont- 
magny  made  a  shrewd  "move,  in  enlisting  in  the  interest  of 
the  French,  the  Algonquin  tribes  settled  along  the  frontier  of 
New  England.  They  had  received  the  rudiments  of  Chris- 
tianity from  some  Capuchin  monks,  who  were  dwelling  among 
them;  but  the  Superior  of  the  Jesuits  selected  for  their  spiritual 
guide  Father  Druillettes.  He  was  a  man  of  very  varied  abilities. 
As  a  missionary  to  the  Algonquin  tribes,  occupying  the  country 
drained  by  the  Chaudierc  River,  now  in  the  province  of  Quebec, 
and  the  northern  portions  of  the  present  State  of  Maine,  he  won 
them  over  so  effectually  to  Christianity  that  whole  tribes  be- 
came forever  obedient  servants  of  the  Church  and  vassals  of 
the  Crown  of  France.  His  talents  were  recognized  by  the  au- 
thorities, and  when  an  ambassador  was  required  to  negotiate  with 
the  colonies  of  Massachusetts  Bay  and  Plymouth  an  offensive  and 
defensive  alliance  against  the  Iroquois,  with  the  tempting 
bait  of  a  reciprocity  treaty  of  trade  thrown  in,  he  was  the  man 
chosen.  He  acquitted  himself  so  dexterously  in  this  delicate 
situation,  and  managed  the  negotiations  with  such  diplomatic 
temper,  that  he  was  twice  received  in  his  ofificial  capacity  by 
Deputy  Governor  Dudley,  though  the  laws  of  the  colony  exposed 
him  to  arrest  as  a  Jesuit ;  and  so  cultivated  was  he  as  a  scholar  and 


304  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

theologian  that,  despite  their  antagonistic  views,  he  became  the 
welcome  guest  of  Ehot,  the  Puritan  missionary  to  the  Indians. 

When  we  find  men,  not  only  of  such  ability,  but  of  such  intel- 
lectual attainments,  forsaking  the  refinements  of  society  and  con- 
demning themselves  to  lives  of  physical  hardship,  and,  worse  still, 
of  intellectual  and  social  banishment  among  a  starving,  wandering 
and  debased  tribe  like  the  Abenaki  Indians,  we  obtain  a  gauge  by 
which  to  measure  the  devotion  that  animated  them.  To  a  man  of 
Father  Druillettes'  breadth  of  mind  and  education  placed  in  such 
circumstances,  the  commission  to  act  as  political  agent  in  an  im- 
portant negotiation  must  have  been  peculiarly  agreeable.  The  zest 
and  ability  with  which  he  executed  the  commission  explains  the 
tendency  of  the  Jesuit  Order  to  make  of  its  members  both 
politicians  and  priests.  Alen  of  such  marked  ability,  such  profound 
learning-  and  such  knowledge  of  the  world — qualities  which,  as 
a  body,  they  alone  among  the  regular  clergy  possessed — would 
possess  peculiar  adaptation  for  political  functions.  It  must  be  re- 
membered that  the  line  of  demarcation  between  the  provinces  of 
statecraft  and  religion  was  not  in  those  days  so  well  defined  as  it 
has  since  become  in  Protestant  lands.  The  ministers  of  New 
England,  when  Father  Druillettes  went  thither  on  his  diplomatic 
mission,  looked  upon  the  direction  of  politics  as  one  of  their  most 
sacred  duties.  That  the  domination  of  priests,  in  Canada,  and  of 
ministers  in  New  England,  led  to  very  different  results,  does  not 
do  away  with  the  fact  that  the  right  of  the  Church  to  control  the 
State  was  then  a  fundamental  axiom  of  the  ecclesiastical  policy 
of  English  Prelatists,  of  Puritans  and  of  the  Church  of  Rome. 

The  negotiations  looking  towards  a  reciprocity  treaty  between 
New  France  and  New  England  seem  to  have  been  informally 
opened  by  New  England,  in  either  1647  or  1648,  during  Mont- 
magny's  administration,  but  to  have  come  to  naught.  It  is  not 
easy  to  conceive  of  any  trade  agreement  by  which  advantage 
would  be  conferred  on  English  colonists,  meeting  with  the  ap- 
proval of  the  government  of  France.  The  only  article  exported 
by  New  France  was  furs,  and  for  these  New  England  would  at 
any  time  have  ofifered  a  better  market  than  France,  under  the  re- 
strictions which  the  laws  of  the  colony  imposed.   This  would  have 


FATHER   URIIILLETTES.  305 

been  the  strongest  reason  why  RicheHeu  would  never  have  con- 
sented to  the  diversion  of  that  hicrative  traffic  to  England  through 
English  colonies.  On  the  other  hand,  England,  if  consulted,  would 
never  have  consented  to  her  colonies  importing  French  wines 
and  French  goods  from  Canada.  The  St.  Lawrence  always 
did  carry  on  more  or  less  of  a  contraband  trade  with  New  Eng- 
land, but  no  treaty  was  ever  framed  with  a  view  of  actually  legit- 
imising smuggling.  That  can  best  be  done  without  a  formal  con- 
venhon.  As  New  England  would  doubtless  have  been  able  to 
carry  on  a  profitable  trade  with  the  St.  Lawrence,  it  is  not  sur- 
prising that  the  first  proposal  came  from  her.  It  does  not  appear 
that  any  response  was  made  by  the  Government  of  New  France. 

When  the  negotiation  was  revived  by  Governor  d'Aillebout, 
two  years  later,  the  Iroquois  campaign  of  extermination,  which 
was  only  a  threat  in  1648,  had  become  a  horrible  reality.  The 
French  Governor  and  his  Council  were,  therefore,  warranted  in 
thinking  that  the  New  England  colonists  might  regard  Iroquois 
success  and  the  extension  of  Iroquois  power  with  as  much  alarm 
as  they  themselves  felt.  To  advocate  a  campaign  against  the 
common  enemy  was  the  prominent  motive  of  Father  Druil- 
lettes'  first  mission  in  164c).  As  he  was  the  apostle  of  the 
Montagnais,  who  were  likely  to  be  the  next  flock  of  Chris- 
tian sheep  to  be  devoured  by  those  ravenous  heathen  wolves,  it  was 
fitting  that  the  mission  of  seeking  protection  for  his  feeble  con- 
verts should  be  committed  to  him.  The  negotiation  of  a  commer- 
cial treaty  does  not  seem  to  have  been  included  in  his  formal  in- 
structions. He  has  left  us  a  full  account  of  the  incidents  of  his 
mission,  and  one  which  throws  a  less  sombre  light  on  New  Eng- 
land life  than  it  is  usually  invested  with  by  popular  fancy. 

He  started  as  ambassador  from  Quebec  on  September  ist,  with- 
out much  pomp  or  ciicumstance,  accompanied  only  by  Noel  Nega- 
hamet,  an  Indian  chief  from  Sillery.  though  with  properly  au- 
thenticated credentials  to  the  New  England  authorities.  He 
ascended  the  Chaudiere,  and  descended  the  Kennebec,  which  he 
spells  Quenebec,  until  he  reached  Narantsouiat,  a  camp  of  the 
Abenakis.  On  the  following  day  they  paddled  down  to  Coussinoc, 
where  the  town  of  Augusta  now  stands,  the  outpost  of  the  English 


306  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

settlements  in  that  direction.  The  clerk  in  charge  there  was  John 
Winslow,  a  brother  of  Edward  Winslow,  the  agent  of  the  Colo- 
nies in  England.  Noel  produced  a  packet  of  beaver  skins  as  a  pro- 
sent  to  the  Governor,  and  introduced  the  mission  with  the  usual 
oratory.  John  Winslow,  who  had  heard  of  Father  Druillettes'  la- 
bors among  the  Abenakis  of  the  St.  Lawrence  and  Iroquois, greeted 
him  with  fervor  as  a  fellow  Christian,  animated  by  the  same 
desire  as  his  own  brother  Edward  to  elevate  the  Indians.  He  made 
him  his  guest  and  accompanied  him  to  Boston.  The  journey  at 
that  season  was  tedious.  The  party  was  obliged  to  go  ten  leagues 
by  land  in  order  to  take  ship  at  Marimitin  (Alerrymeeting).  They 
did  not  reach  Boston  till  the  8th  of  December.  While  coasting 
from  the  mouth  of  the  Kennebec,  the  presence  on  board  of  the 
French  priest  was  looked  upon  with  the  gravest  suspicion  by  the 
New  England  fishermen.  Acadia  had  not  yet  been  taken  by  Sedg- 
wick for  Cromwell,  and  the  New  England  coast  stood  in  constant 
dread  of  attack  from  that  quarter.  But  no  suspicion  annoyed  him 
in  Boston.  His  coming  had  been  announced,  and  Major  Gebin 
(Major  Gibbons)  welcomed  him  to  his  house  and  gave  him  a 
key  to  a  room  where  he  could  practice  the  rites  of  his  religion  with- 
out interruption.  It  seems  that  Major  Gibbons  was  a  great  friend 
of  LaTour,  that  eccentric  adventurer,  whose  vicissitudes,  includ- 
ing the  defense  of  his  fort  (La  Tour  on  the  Novia  Scotia  coast) 
by  his  heroic  wife,  and  her  subsequent  death,  are  amongst  the 
romantic  episodes  of  Canadian  history.  Driven  away  from 
Acadia  by  his  relentless  enemy,  Charnisay,  he  had  sought  refuge 
at  Quebec,  of  all  places  in  the  world,  notwithstanding  his  taint  of 
Calvinism,  and  had  there  been  hospitably  received.  He  had  gone 
thence  to  Boston  to  enlist  the  aid  of  the  colony  in  righting  his 
wrong,  a  proceeding  savoring  somewhat  of  treason.  But  it  would 
seem  that  his  generous  treatment  in  Quebec  had  so  mitigated  his 
animosity  that,  like  Balaam,  he  blessed  where  he  had  gone  to 
curse.* 

*  There  must  have  been  in  La  Tour's  character  a  strange  mixture  of  heroism, 
religious  susceptibility,  conviviality  and  calculating  shrewdness,  for  after  losing 
wife  and  all  he  had  in  the  stubborn  fight,  he  liad  the  audacity  to  go  to  Quebec, 
where  he  won  over  the  austere  Catholic,  Montmagny;  then  left  in  Boston  .such 
pleasant  memories  of  good  fellowship  behind  him,  that  the  jolly  Major  was  will- 


A  JESUIT   NEGOTIATOR  AT   BOSTON..  307 

On  the  9th  of  December  Major  Gibbons  introduced  the  priestly 
ambassador  to  Governor  Dudley  at  Rogsbury  (Roxbury).  Dudley 
having  examined  his  credentials,  called  a  meeting  of  the  City  Fath- 
ers (magistrates)  on  the  13th.  On  that  date  Druillettes  was  enter- 
tained at  a  public  dinner,  and  stated  his  case,  as  he  describes  it,  "to 
the  magistrate,  a  man  deputed  by  the  people,  whom  they  called  a 
representative."  They  discussed  his  proposal  for  an  offensive  and 
defensive  alliance  against  the  Iroquois  in  secret  session.  Then  all 
adjourned  to  supper  before  they  informed  him  that  the  matter  was 
beyond  their  jurisdiction,  and  that,  as  ambassador  of  the  Catechu- 
mens of  the  Kennebec,  he  m.ust  appeal  to  the  Council  of  the  colony 
of  Plymouth  (the  Kennebec  was  in  the  Plymouth  grant.)  To 
Plymouth,  therefore,  he  went,  where  he  was  received  by  one  of  the 
five  farmers  of  Koussenac  called  Padis,* 

William  Brentford  (Bradford)  appointed  the  following  day  for 
an  audience,  and  as  it  was  Friday,  in  deference  to  his  guest's  reli- 
gious scruples,  entertained  him  at  a  fish  dinner.  He  remained  there 
until  the  24th,  in  constant  conference;  but  his  account  of  the  pro- 
ceedings was  embodied  in  a  special  report,  which  was  not  pub- 
lished, for  the  Jesuit  authorities  always  maintained  a  discreet 
silence  in  regard  to  such  matters. 

On  his  journey  back  his  hosts  insisted  on  paying  all  expenses 
by  the  way.  Reaching  Rogsbury  (Roxbury)  at  nightfall,  he  was 
the  guest  of  a  minister  whom  he  calls  Maitre  Heliot,  who  he  says 
was  teaching  some  Indians.  Their  converse  was  so  pleasant  that 
Eliot  entreated  him  to  tarry  and  spend  the  winter  with  him.f  Evi- 

ing  to  reciprocate  even  on  the  person  of  a  Jesuit  Father.  He  ended  by  cancelling 
all  past  differences  with  Charnisay  by  marrying  his  widow.  Gibbons'  connection 
with  him,  however,  did  not  turn  to  his  advantage,  for  he  suffered  heavy  pecuniary 
loss  through  lendmg  La  Tour  money  on  his  St.  John  property,  which  was  finally 
confiscated. 

*  William  Paddy,  one  of  the  five  merchants  to  whom  the  Kennebec  trade  was 
leased  in  1649  for  three  years.     Thwaite's  Jesuits,  Vol.  36,  p.  241. 

f  The  methods  of  evangelization  adopted  by  the  Jesuits  and  by  Eliot  were 
so  widely  different  that  the  discussion  by  the  two  men  of  the  subject,  so  dear 
to  the  hearts  of  both,  was  probably  not  only  interesting  but  somewhat  keenly 
controversial.  How  the  Jesuits  sought  to  win  the  Indians  to  Christianity  and  civil 
ization  is  told  in  this  history.  On  the  other  hand,  the  mere  recital  of  the  works 
translated  by  Eliot  for  the  instruction  of  his  converts  expresses  significantly  the 
Puritan  scheme  for  saving  the  souls  of  the  red  men.  Baxter's  "Call  to  the  Un- 
converted "  and  Bayly's  "  Practice  of  Piety,"  translated  into  an  Indian  dialect,  must 
have  been  as  bewildeting  to  the  Wampanogas  as  his  "  Logick  Primer  "to  the 
students  at  the  Indian  school  at  Natick. 


308  QUEBEC   IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

dently  these  much-maligned  New  Englanders  were  not  such  bigots 
after  all  I  In  Boston  he  was  again  made  free  of  Major  Gibbons' 
house.  He  seems  to  have  impressed  very  deeply  a  Mr.  Ebeny 
(Wm.  Hibbins?),  one  of  the  magistrates,  with  the  justice  of  his 
plea.  The  Governor  and  Council  of  Plymouth  must  have  held  out 
some  hope  of  favoring  the  alliance,  or  Governor  Dudley,  on  part- 
ing, would  not  have  shaken  his  hand  heartily  and  begged  him  to 
carry  his  greetings  to  the  French  Governor  at  Quebec,  and  assure 
him  that  "let  the  two  crowns  wage  what  wars  they  will,  we  wish 
to  be  good  friends  and  your  humble  servants."  If  Druillettes  re- 
ports Dudley's  farewell  correctly,  the  Governor  was  not  such  a 
hater  of  popery  as  history  depicts  him.  A  vague  promise  would 
seem  to  have  been  understood  as  given  for  the  passage  of  French 
troops,  if  necessary,  through  Boston  in  case  of  war;  and  both 
colonies  are  said  by  Druillettes  at  that  time  to  have  expressed 
themselves  as  favorable  to  an  alliance. 

Of  course,  no  decisive  action  could  be  taken  except  by  the 
Council  of  the  four  Confederated  States  of  New  England,  which 
confederacy  was  at  that  period  a  living  organization ;  and  such 
action  was  not  then  sought.  Before  leaving,  Father  Druillettes 
wrote  to  his  Superior  in  France  by  a  Boston  packet,  detailing 
minutely  all  proceedings,  and  asking  for  instructions  for  his  guid- 
ance, and  for  that  of  the  French  Governor,  to  be  sent  by  the  earliest 
fishing  fleet  to  Gaspe.  He  also  wrote  to  Edward  Winslow,  the 
colonial  agent  in  London,  at  the  suggestion  of  his  brother 
John,  urging  him  to  use  his  influence  with  the  colony  for  the  pro- 
tection of  the  Montagnais  Indians  against  the  Iroquois.  And 
knowing  that  the  colonies  of  Connecticut  and  New  Haven  would 
have  a  voice  in  the  final  decision,  he  addressed  a  strong  plea  to 
John  Winthrop  at  Pequott  River,  the  Latin  original  of  which  has 
been  found  among  the  Winthrop  papers.*  His  friend,  Major 
Gibbons,  however,  had  been  gauging  public  opinion  in  Boston, 
and  rather  damped  his  hopes  of  acceptance  of  his  proposal.  The 
good  Father  had  been  long  enough  in  the  land  to  learn  that  the 
people  held  control.     Lie  calls  the  colony  a  Republic.     On  his  re- 

*  John  Winthrop  was  the  son  of  the  famous  John  Winthrop,  by  whom  the 
negotiations  with  Montmagny  were  opened  in  1646  and  1647. 


PRIEST  AND   PURITAN. 


309 


turn  in  Capt.  Yan's  bark  the  good  Father  meets  others  whose 
names  have  become  household  words.  Driven  by  stress  of 
weather  into  Morblety  (Marblehead)  he  is  there  entertained  by 
the  Rev.  Wilham  Walter,  who  takes  him  over  to  Salem,  and  intro- 
duces him  to  Mr.  Endicott.  He  found  in  Endicott  a  good  French 
scholar,  a  sympathetic  listener  and  a  wise  adviser.  At  Endicott's 
suggestion  he  wrote  a  memorial  to  l)e  laid  before  the  General 
Court  of  Boston.  Endicott  promised  to  present  and  advocate 
it.  Like  the  apostles  of  old,  the  Jesuit  missionary  was 
travelling  without  purse  or  scrip,  but  Endicott  supplied  his 
needs,  and  he  was  not  allowed  to  want  for  anything.  In  return  he 
repaid  his  host  by  courtesy  and  good  fellowship,  and  the  benefit  of 
his  prayers ;  and  he  was  able  to  settle  with  Capt.  Yan  for  his  pas- 
sage by  securing  him  permission  to  land  a  cargo  of  Indian  corn 
in  Gaspe  Basin  in  the  following  Spring.  Once  on  the  Kennebec 
and  among  his  own  Indians  he  was  again  at  home.  On  the  13th 
of  April  his  friend,  John  Winslow,  returned  with  the  encouraging 
news  that  the  disposition  of  the  magistrates  of  both  Boston  and 
Plymouth  was  favorable ;  that  private  letters  had  been  sent  to  the 
Governors  of  Connecticut  and  New  Haven,  with  a  view  of  in- 
fluencing them  to  support  the  alliance,  and  that  every  effort  was 
being  made  to  prevent  the  sale  of  firearms  to  the  Iroquois  by  the 
colonists  of  the  Connecticut  Valley. 

Appended  to  the  Journal  are  "Reflections  touching  what  can 
be  expected  on  the  part  of  New  England  against  the  Iroquois." 
Judging  from  the  businesslike  way  and  the  calm  indiffer- 
ence to  humanitarian  dictates  with  which  two  Indian  tribes 
had  already  been  wiped  out  by  the  New  England  colonists, 
the  P'ather  concludes  that  they  would  have  little  compunction 
as  to  the  extermination  of  the  Iroquois.  He  calculates 
that  Boston  alone  can  put  into  the  field  four  thousand  fight- 
ing men,  and  that,  as  the  male  population  of  the  New  Eng- 
land Confederation  is  40,000,  there  will  be  no  difficulty  in 
raising  a  force  sufficient  for  the  purpose.  He  tliinks  they 
can  count  on  the  support  of  three  of  the  four  colonies,  when  the 
vote  for  the  alliance  comes  up  in  the  House.    He  feels  very  con- 


310  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

fident  of  the  adherence  of  Plymouth,  inasmuch  as  its  revenue  is 
drawn  in  great  measure  from  a  duty  of  one-sixth  on  all  the  peltries 
brought  down  the  Kennebec  by  the  Abenakis ;  and  as  the  Governor 
himself  and  four  of  the  principal  inhabitants  are  traders  on  the 
River,  both  public  and  private  interests  are  enlisted  in  the 
protection  of  the  Indians.  The  case  is  different  with  Connecti- 
cut and  New  Haven.  Yet  inasmuch  as  the  Northern  colonies 
helped  Connecticut  in  the  Pequod  War,  he  thinks  Connecticut  will 
be  willing  to  help  them  when  their  interests  are  concerned.  As  to 
Massachusetts,  the  bait  to  catch  her  will  be  the  hope  of  trade  with 
the  St.  Lawrence.  Just  then  the  wars  in  which  Cromwell  and  the 
Commonwealth  were  engaged  were  likely  to  make  the  coasting 
trade  with  the  Virginias  and  the  West  Indies  very  precarious.  But 
Spain  would  not  carry  a  naval  war  of  reprisals  into  Northern 
latitudes ;  therefore,  if  the  Boston  traders  were  assured  of  access 
to  the  Kennebec,  their  sympathies  would  be  enlisted  in  the  good 
cause. 

Father  Druillettes  did  not  go  to  Quebec  to  report  in  person 
till  well  on  in  June,  but  his  written  reports  must  have  decided  the 
Governor  and  the  Superior  of  the  Order  to  send  him  back  with  a 
lay  delegate.  The  person  selected  was  M.  Godefroy,  whom  we 
have  met  as  joint  councillor  with  M.  Giffard  in  the  first  council 
under  the  new  constitution.  We  have  no  published  journal  of  their 
faring;  but  Charlevoix  publishes  the  letter  of  the  Coun- 
cil of  Quebec  to  the  Commissioners  of  New  England ;  and  the 
minutes  of  Council  of  date  June  20,  165 1,  as  well  as  the  Governor's 
commission,  have  been  preserved.  Father  Druillettes'  title  of 
priest  in  the  commission  is  omitted — he  is  judiciously  called  a 
preacher  of  the  Gospel.  These  documents  recite  the  fact  that  the 
New  England  colonies  in  1647  opened  a  correspondence  with  the 
authorities  of  New  France  looking  to  mutual  trade  relations  under 
certain  restrictions.  The  two  agents  are  authorized  to  discuss 
and  frame  a  treaty  for  reciprocal  trade,  subject  to  confirmation  by 
a  duly  appointed  ambassador  from  France.  Both  sides,  however, 
must  have  perfectly  understood  that  no  treaty  which  would  bene- 
fit New  England  would  ever  be  made  by  the  Court  of  A^crsailles. 
The     proffer     of     a     commercial     treaty     was     simply     a     lure 


NEGOTIATIONS  END   IN    FAILURE.  311 

to  the  New  England  Council  to  join  in  the  war  of  extermination 
against  the  Iroquois.  All  we  know  is  from  the  Jesuit's  Journal, 
namely,  that  the  delegates  left  with  Noel  and  a  party  of  Abenakis 
in  seven  or  eight  canoes  on  June  22nd,  that  letters  were  received 
on  August  15th  from  Father  Druillettes,  dated  from  his 
camping  ground  on  the  Kennebec  (Kousenck)  where  they  had  ar- 
rived on  July  3rd,  and  whence  they  were  to  depart  for  iioston  on 
the  13th.  Their  journey,  made  in  summer  weather,  was  less  tedi- 
ous than  had  been  the  previous  one  of  Father  Druillettes ;  for  on 
the  31st  of  July  Noel  arrived  in  Quebec  with  letters  from  the  dele- 
gates written  in  Boston.  M.  Godefroy  followed  on  October  30th, 
but  Father  Druillettes  remained  with  his  flock  until  the  spring  fol- 
lowing, making  the  journey  on  snowshoes  to  Quebec,  where  he 
arrived  on  one  of  the  last  days  of  March. 

The  record  of  failure  is  told  by  Mr.  Hutchinson  in  his  "History 
of  the  Colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay,"  edition  1764,  page  166,  sub- 
stantially as  set  forth  in  the  French  dociunents.  It  is  to  the  effect 
that  the  treaty  of  commerce,  which  would  have  been  acceptable, 
was  coupled  with  a  condition  precedent  that  Massachusetts  and 
Plymouth  should  either  join  the  French  in  an  offensive  alliance 
against  the  Iroquois,  or  aid  them  financially,  or  at  least  grant  their 
troops  free  passage  through  colonial  territory.  But,  as  the  Iro- 
quois had  during  the  Pequod  War  been  strictly  neutral,  and  had 
never  evinced  an  unfriendly  spirit;  and  as  the  direct  route  from 
the  St.  Lawrence  to  the  Mohawk  country  did  not  lead  through 
either  colony,  the  politic  Puritans  were  not  inclined  to  involve 
themselves  in  endless  trouble,  and  accept  in  compensation  only 
the  uncertain  advantages  which  might  be  derived  from  such  a 
treaty  of  commerce  as  would  be  acceptable  to  the  Court  of  V^cr- 
sailles.  Consequently  the  courts  of  the  two  colonies  politely  de- 
clined the  overture. 

The  Indian  version  of  the  failure  given  by  Noel  in  a  letter  to 
Father  Buteux  is  laconic  and  to  the  point.  "I  was  sent  to  the 
country  of  the  Abnaquiois  and  of  the  English,  who  are  their  neigh- 
bors, to  ask  them  for  assistance  against  the  Iroquois.  I  obeyed 
those  who  sent  me,  but  my  journey  was  in  vain.  The  Englishman 
replies  not.    He  has  no  good  thoughts  for  us.     This  grieves  me 


312        QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

much.      We  see  ourselves   dying  and  being  exterminated  every 
day."    (Thwaites.      Vol.  37,  Page  77.) 

Thus  ended  the  only  serious  attempt  on  the  part  of  the  Eng- 
lish and  Frencli  colonies  to  harmonize  their  Indian  policies  and 
their  trade  interests.  Had  the  French  colonists  been  as  free  to 
regulate  their  commercial  relations  as  New  England  claimed  to 
be,  the  negotiations  might  have  resulted  more  favorably ;  for  New 
York  was  still  the  Dutch  colony  of  New  Netherlands,  and 
the  Iroquois  were  really  a  threatening  cloud  hanging  over  the 
Connecticut  A^alley.  Ihit  when  the  New  Netherlands  l)ecame 
New  York,  so  that  the  Iroquois  nations  formed  a  bufifer  State 
between  the  English  and  French  ;  and  when  the  French  began 
urging  their  Abenaki  converts  to  take  revenge  on  the  English 
settlements  for  the  depredations  of  the  Iroquois  on  the  St.  Law- 
rence, all  pretence  of  friendly  feeling  between  French  and  English 
vanished.  A  century  of  hatred  between  these  two  groups  of  Chris- 
tian colonists  followed.  They  lived  on  the  fringe  of  a  great  con- 
tinent, which  they  should  have  joined  in  redeeming  from  barbar- 
ism ;  but.  instead  of  uniting  to  civilize  its  savage  inhabitants  and 
teach  them  the  arts  of  peace,  they  wasted  their  own  energies  and 
lives  in  sanguinary  conflict. 


CHAPTER   XV. 

Gleanings  from  Father  Jerome  Lalemant^s  Contributions 
to  the  Journal  des  Jesuites,  J  645  to  J  650. 

From  1645  to  1670,  with  two  short  gaps,  we  have  a  dehghtful 
record  of  contemporary  events  in  a  Journal  kept  by  the  Superior 
of  the  Jesuit  Missions,  wh.o  was  also  rector  of  the  College.  The 
Journal,  of  course,  deals  chiefly  with  ecclesiastical  details,  but  as 
such  things  were  of  much  more  general  interest  in  those  days 
than  they  are  now,  the  narrative  does  not  distort,  to  any  serious 
extent,  the  routine  of  the  every  day  thoughts  and  actions  of 
either  laymen  or  clerics.  It  gives  us  glimpses  of  a  native 
courtesy  which  smoothed  the  ruggedness  of  existence,  and 
softened  the  asperities  which  it  could  not  wholly  banish  from 
the  little  tow'n.  To  laymen  it  is  of  interest  to  be  admitted  to  some  of 
the  secrets  and  special  interests  of  clerical  life.  Of  these  the  Jour- 
nal reveals  not  a  few — some  trivial,  some  of  greater  importance.  It 
is  not  a  matter  of  great  moment  to  know  how  many  candles  were 
lighted  during  the  saint ;  nor  what  attitude  the  Governor  assumed 
in  and  out  of  church  ;  but  it  is  curious  to  note  the  very  minute 
particularity  with  which  the  details  of  religious  functions  were  ar- 
ranged, and  how,  nevertheless,  occasional  errors  occurred  in  the 
conduct  of  the  services  through  ignorance,  or  neglect  of  careful 
rehearsal,  and  how  blunders  were  made  which  introduced  confu- 
sion into  the  most  accurately  planned  processions.  Such  trifles  arc 
told  side  by  side  with  events  of  importance,  and  all  with  such 
charming  frankness  and  naturalness,  that  it  is  difficult  to  conceive 
that  the  same  men  wrote  the  Journal  who  indited  from  year  to  year 
the  Relations  wath  their  everlasting  stories  about  the  angelic 
sweetness  of  the  Indian  converts ;  the  holy  raptures  of  some  of  the 
civil  magnates  of  the  colony ;  and  the  seraphic  perfection  of  life 
and  soul  of  certain  members  of  the  religious  communities  with 
whom  the  Fathers  of  the  Society  of  Jesus  were  not  in  conflict. 


314  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY.  ^ 

These  yearly  reports  aim  too  evidently  at  effect  on  the  minds  of 
the  readers  in  France  to  whom  they  were  addressed,  and 
like  all  self-conscious  literary  efforts,  are  stiff  and  stilted,  and 
lack  the  clear  and  vibrant  ring  of  sincerity.  The  entries  in  the 
Journal,  on  the  contrary,  prove  that  the  rigid  discipline  which  the 
novice  of  the  Society  of  Jesus  underwent  did  not  eradicate  his  in- 
dividuality.* 

In  regard  to  the  Jesuits  generally,  it  may  be  said  that  the  in- 
timate contact  with  the  world  and  its  secular  affairs,  which 
the  duties  of  many  of  them  involved,  counteracted  the  narrowing 
effect  of  their  religious  education,  and  created  that  extraordinarily 

*  Rochemonteix,  the  historian  of  the  Jesuits  in  New  France  (Vol.  I-15), 
frankly  admits  that  "  the  Relations,  as  pubHshed,  do  not  give  an  altogether  true 
portrait  of  the  features  of  New  France.  They  show  only  the  fairest  and  most  con- 
solatory side  of  society.  The  other  is  intentionally  thrown  into  the  shade,  or,  to 
speak  more  correctly,  passed  over  in  silence."  It  is  history — but  history  only 
half  told.  The  same  high  authority  ascribes  the  origin  of  the  Relations  to  the 
instructions  given  by  St.  Francis  Xavier  to  the  missionaries,  Pere  Juan  de  Beira 
and  Pere  Berzee,  to  report  to  headquarters  for  publication  such  news  as 
should  bear  witness  to  the  Society's  zeal  and  to  the  success  which  divine  grace 
deigns  to  grant  to  its  humble  ofificeis.  He  quotes  also  the  significant  caution  givei*. 
"Nothing  must  appear  which  could  give  just  offence  to  anyone;  nothing  but  what 
shall  at  once  inspire  the  reader  with  thoughts  of  God,  His  glory  and  the  advance- 
ment of  his  service."  The  advice  was  good,  and  the  Relations  written  by  the  mis- 
sionaries in  both  hemispheres  in  accordance  with  this  advice  constitute  memorable 
and  interesting  documents.  Nevertheless,  as  the  limitations  laid  down  were 
strictly  observed,  the  scope  of  the  letters  as  historical  records  is  correspondingly 
restricted,  and  their  value  proportionately  reduced.  They  \vere  intended  to  be, 
and  were,  arguments  in  glorification  of  the  Society  rather  than  faithful  chronicles 
of  contemporary  events,  feather  Le  Jeune,  in  1635,  warns  his  readers  that  he 
does  not  pretend  to  describe  all  that  happens  in  Canada,  but  only  such  events  as 
redound  to  the  advance  of  the  faith  and  the  glory  of  God. 

In  addition  to  the  Relations,  and  the  Lettres  Edifiantes,  there  were  sent  to 
their  superiors  by  the  members  of  the  Society  private,  confidential  letters,  with 
descriptions  and  criticisms  of  events  and  public  personages,  which  gave  the  heads 
of  the  Order  more  perfect  knowledge  of  what  was  transpiring  than  even  the 
Ministers  of  State  could  obtain  from  their  own  officials.  It  would  have  been  as 
unwise  and  improper  to  publish  these  as  it  would  be  for  any  Government  to  print 
the  confidential  reports  of  their  diplomatic  agents. 

Rochemonteix  attributes  the  cessation,  in  1673,  of  the  publication  of  the  Rela- 
tions to  the  brief  of  Pope  Clement  X.  forbidding  the  publication  of  missionary 
records,  owing  to  the  scandal  among  the  religious  orders  growing  out  of  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  Chinese  Rites  (that  is,  the  recognition  by  the  Jesuit  missionaries  of 
certain  Chinese  customs  and  beliefs  as  innocent,  because  not  contrary  to  the 
essential  doctrines  of  Christ).  And  thus  it  came  about,  among  other  misfortunes, 
that  the  narrative  of  the  explorations,  for  example,  of  Father  Marquette,  which 
passed  through  the  hands  of  Father  d'Ablon,  Superior  of  the  Order  in  Canada, 
to  the  General  of  the  Order  in  Rome,  and  the  Provincial  in  France,  was  buried  in 
oblivion. 


MILITARY    LAXITY.  '3I5 

composite  character  which  has  made  the  Jesuit  priest  the  idol  of 
some  and  the  abomination  of  others — the  astutest  of  pohticians 
and  the  most  devout  of  missionaries,  with  a  tenacity  of  purpose 
and  a  bhndness  of  submission  to  the  orders  of  his  superior,? 
which  have  caused  him  to  be  j^rofoundly  dreaded  and  suspected  as 
a  pohtical  agent. 

Father  Lalemant  made  the  first  entry  in  the  first  volume  of 
the  Journal  in  August,  1645:  the  last  entry  in  the  third  volume 
■was  made  in  1775.  Unfortunately  the  first  volume  alone  is  known 
to  have  survived.  The  three  existed  when  the  order  vv^as  dissolved, 
and  were  still  in  the  Jesuit  Library  when  Father  Cazot  died  in 
1800.  Their  value  was  at  once  appreciated,  for  William  Smith,  in 
his  History  of  Canada,  published  in  the  year  181 5,  referring  to  cer- 
tain events  that  occurred  in  1710,  quotes  from  the  third  volume  of 
the  Journal.  (See  Smith,  Vol.  I,  page  170.)  The  now  surviving 
portion  was  found  in  Mr.  Cochran's  office  at  Quebec  in  1815,  and 
the  missing  volumes  may  peradventure  yet  be  unearthed  from 
some  obscure  hiding  place.  (See  Introduction  to  Laverdiere  & 
Casgrain's  edition.) 

The  Journal  opens  with  some  severe  comments  by  Father  Lal- 
emant on  the  laxity  of  tlie  military  authorities.  He  had  come 
down  from  the  Huron  country  to  assume  the  duties  of  Superior 
and  take  charge  of  the  college,  which  was  nearing  completion.  The 
welcome  news  greeted  him  that  the  company  had  abandoned  its 
exclusive  privileges,  and  that  all  the  beaver  skins  which  hisHurons 
had  brought  down  would  go  to  the  inhabitants.  As  he  passed  the 
mouth  of  the  Richelieu  he  found  only  ten  soldiers  in  a  neglected 
fort ;  de  Sennetaire,  the  commandant,  as  well  as  Mons.  Champ- 
flour,  the  commandant  of  Three  Rivers,  being  on  leave  of 
absence  in  France.  The  reverend  Father  reflects  that  the  St.  Law- 
rence— not  the  Seine — was  the  proper  place  for  the  military 
guardians  of  the  Canadian  frontier. 

However  lax  the  military  precautions  and  discipline  may 
have  been,  the  Father  Superior  found  his  own  forces  at 
their  posts:  four  priests,  with  three  servants,  at  Three 
Rivers;  three  priests,  a  brother  and  four  men  at  Sillery; 
three    priests,    three    brothers,    and    four    serving   men    at    Que- 


3l6  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

bee.  There  were  in  addition  at  Quebec  Father  Quentin, 
the  Procureur,  who  traveled  annually  to  and  fro  between 
France  and  Quebec,  and  his  assistant,  Brother  Liegeois.  The 
serving  men,  who  had  assumed  religious  obligations  to  labor  "for 
life"  for  the  Order,  received  lOO  livres  a  year.  It  was  a  mag- 
nificent organization,  economically  conducted.  Other  servants, 
however,  were  employed,  who  came  under  no  perpetual  obliga- 
tions ;  for  one  of  Father  Lalemant's  first  acts  was  to  employ  a 
sailor — one  Chretiennaut — as  cook  and  man  of  all  work,  for  the 
Three  Rivers  mission,  at  30  ecus  per  year.  He  had  come  out  in 
Repentigny's  fleet,  and  turned  out  to  be  a  very  doubtful  character. 
He  had  no  "discharge,"  as  he  had  left  his  ship  because  discontent- 
ed. But  he  was  not  a  deserter,  for  he  entered  the  Jesuits'  service 
six  days  before  Repentigny's  five  ships  sailed  with  the  first  cargoes, 
under  the  new  arrangement,  of  20,000  beaver  skins  consigned  by 
the  inhabitants,  and  2,000  consigned  by  the  company,  worth  one 
pistole,  or  10  to  11  francs  the  pound.  Poor  Chretiennaut  evidently 
found  the  rule  of  the  Fathers  too  straightlaced,  for  he  left  their 
service  for  that  of  the  commandant  of  the  Fort  at  Three  Rivers. 
His  habits,  however,  were  too  lax  to  be  overlooked  even  by  the 
military,  for  we  last  hear  of  him  as  "sur  le  chevalet  ou  il  se  rompit" 
— astride  the  wooden  horse,  on  which  he  ruptured  himself. 

The  fathers  were  still  temporary  occupants  of  part  of  the  Com- 
pany's quarters,  where  they  had  been  offered  accommodations  on 
the  destruction  of  their  own  home  and  Champlain's  chapel  by  fire 
in  1640.  But  the  conveniences,  even  if  given  gratuitously,  were 
not  lavish,  for  Father  Lalemant  had  to  obtain  permission  to  build 
an  oven.  Heretofore,  he  says,  bread  made  of  imported  flour  had 
been  supplied  at  15  sols  by  the  company's  store;  but  now  that  they 
had  an  oven  of  their  own,  better  and  cheaper  bread  could  be  made 
from  native  wheat.  But  clothes  were  scarcer  than  bread,  for  the 
seven  loaves  which  the  Fathers  distributed  on  the  occasion  of  the 
jubilee  were  exchanged  by  their  recipients  at  the  company  store 
for  boots  and  linen.  There  seem  to  have  been  many  indigent 
French,  for,  of  the  Governor's  gift  of  two  pistoles,  one  was  for 
the  poor  among  his  own  countrymen,  the  other  for  the  Sillery 
Indians.     In  addition  the  Lieutenant  Governor  was  authorized  to 


INTEREST  IN   RELIGIOUS   OBSERVANCES.  317 

distribute  200  francs'  worth  of  food  and  clothing  at  the  discretion 
of  the  Jesuit  Fathers.  Mention  is  made  this  year  of  the  initiation 
of  a  local  industry  which  has  survived  to  this  day — the  sale  of  fire- 
wood. The  price  paid  would  seem  not  to  have  been  excessive.  If 
£ut  from  land  not  owned  by  the  wood  chopper,  it  was  delivered 
for  30  sols  the  cord ;  but  at  2  livres,  or  10  sols  more,  if  from  the 
seller's  land.  The  difference,  10  sols  the  cord,  was  therefore  the 
value  of  the  wood.  To  heat  their  houses  at  Notre  Dame  des  Anges, 
and  their  rooms  in  the  Company's  quarters,  the  Jesuits  burnt  two 
sleigh  loads  a  day. 

There  was  not  only  official  but  social  intercourse  among  the 
religious  communities.  On  December  5th  the  Father  received  an 
invitation  to  dine  at  the  Ursuline  convent,  but  was  obliged  to  re- 
fuse, as  it  was  the  first  Sunday  in  Advent,  and  he  had  to  preach  at 
the  Hospital. 

Cold  and  hunger  did  not  .  quench  religious  enthusiasm, 
which  the  frequent  recurrence  of  church  festivals  maintained  at  a 
high  temperature.  Midnight  mass  at  Christmas  was  celebrated 
with  a  musical  service.  Mons.  de  la  Ferte  sang  bass,  Martin 
played  the  violin,  and  a  nameless  musician  made  discord  with  a 
German  flute,  though  in  the  rehearsal  he  had  succeeded  in  keeping 
time  and  tune.  Another  contrc-tcmps  was  the  failure  of  the  sac- 
ristan to  give  the  necessary  signal  for  the  salvo  of  artillery  at  the 
moment  of  the  elevation.  To  add  to  their  worry,  the  celebration 
nearly  ended  in  a  catastrophe.  To  heat  the  chapel,  which  was 
probably  in  the  second  story  of  the  Company's  house,  two  large 
boilers  had  been  filled  with  charcoal,  and  should  have  been  re- 
moved immediately  after  the  ceremony.  But  in  the  excitement 
this  precaution  was  neglected  and  the  floor  beneath  them  became 
ignited.  The  kitchen  was  beneath  the  chapel,  and  the  cook,  up 
betimes,  busy  with  his  Christmas  functions,  discovered  the  fire 
and  succeeded  in  extinguishing  it. 

The  Jubilee  fetes  lasted  till  December  31st — the  most  impres- 
sive incident  being  the  procession  of  more  than  100  Indians  from 
Sillery  to  perform  their  devotions  at  the  Parish  Church.  But  it 
was  too  much  to  expect  that  the  festivities  should  end  without 
some  friction.  Midnight  mass,  then  as  now,  offered  temptations  to 


3l8  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

the  sinner  as  well  as  consolation  to  the  saints.  Two  Frenchmen, 
up  too  late,  were  arrested  for  drunkenness.  As  the  Indians  drew 
invidious  comparisons  between  the  severity  with  which  they  were 
punished  and  the  light  chastisement  inflicted  on  the  French  for 
like  offences,  the  Governor  condemned  the  culprits  to  be  exposed 
sur  le  chcvalet — on  the  wooden  horse,  in  a  bitter  northeast  wind. 
How  they  must  have  enjoyed  a  hot  drink  afterward!  and  doubt- 
less the  drink  was  forthcoming,  for  some  at  least  of  their  fellow 
townsmen  must  have  been  boiling  over  with  sympathetic  indig- 
nation and  ready  to  treat  them. 

Then  there  was  a  controversy  as  to  procedure  in  the  distribu- 
tion of  the  pain  benit,  which  had  always  been  a  bone  of  contention. 
The  Governor  had  received  the  chanteau,  or  last  and  smallest  cake, 
which  entitled  him  to  supply  it  the  following  Sunday.  The  amount 
provided  was  in  excess  of  the  distribution,  and  it  was  decided  that 
the  two  Alarguillers — church  wardens — who  were  the  Seigneur 
Giffard  and  the  new  company's  chief  clerk,  des  Chastelets — should 
be  the  next  recipients,  and  that  what  remained  should  be  given  to 
the  people  in  the  order  of  their  houses  from  the  head  of  the  Cote 
St.  Genevieve,  which  led  down  to  the  valley  of  the  St.  Charles. 

A  still  more  delicate  question  had  to  be  settled  by  Father  Lale- 
mant  before  the  year  closed.  Father  Vimont,  his  predecessor,  had 
given  the  sisters  of  the  Ursulines  and  of  the  Hotel  Dieu  a  lease  for 
six  years,  without  rent,  of  the  rich  bottom  lands  on  the  Beauport 
Flats,  between  the  Cabanne  aux  Topiers  River  and  Gififard's 
seignory.  Thougli  the  religious  ladies  were  deserving  of  all  con- 
sideration, this  was  a  purely  business  transaction,  and  as  a  busi- 
ness man  he  was  not  inclined  to  confirm,  though  he  did  not  dis- 
allow, so  one-sided  a  bargain  without  due  deliberation.  In  the  first 
place,  when  Father  Vimont  gave  the  lease,  though  still  filling  the 
office  of  Superior,  he  had  been  notified  that  his  successor  had  been 
appointed ;  secondly,  the  term  of  the  lease  was  too  long,  and  third- 
ly, some  consideration  should  in  fairness  be  paid.  The  negotiations 
ended  in  an  exchange  :  only  on  consideration  of  receiving  an  equi- 
valent, would  the  good  ladies  consent  to  abandon  their  leases. 

1646. 

Old  France  was  revived  in  New  France  bv  that  cordial  inter- 


NEW  YEAR  VISITS   AND  GIFT.  3I9 

change  of  visits  and  presents  at  New  Year's  which  unfortunately 
is  dying  out,  with  many  another  good  old  custom.  Father  Lale- 
mant  forgot  no  one  on  the  Jour  de  rAn.On  January  1st  the  soldiers 
greeted  the  Governor  by  presenting  arms,  while  the  inhabitants  in 
a  bocfy  saluted  him.  His  Excellency  then  at  7  a.  m.,  thougli  it  was 
still  dark,  crossed  the  Place  d'Armes,  to  salute,  collectively  and  in- 
dividually, the  good  Fathers.  After  grand  mass  the  Superior  re- 
turned the  visit  unannounced,  as  it  was  a  day  of  general  salutation. 
And  the  ladies  of  both  communities  sent  their  greetings  to  the 
priests  by  letters,  that  of  the  Ursulines  accompanied  by  a  present 
of  candles,  chaplets,  a  crucifix,  and  two  big  pigeon  pies.  In  re- 
turn Father  Lalemant  sent  them  enamelled  images  of  St.  Ignatius 
and  St.  Francis  Xavier.  To  the  church  wardens  the  father  gave 
books  of  devotion,  relics  and  medals.  Humbler  friends  were  not 
forgotten.  The  washerwoman  of  the  church  received  a  crucifix. 
Mme.  Martin  was  rejoiced  by  receiving  four  handkerchiefs,  and 
her  husband  perhaps  better  pleased  by  a  reminder  in  the  shape  of 
a  bottle  of  brandy,  for  the  Church,  however  opposed  to  excess,  did 
not  forbid  good  cheer.  Robert  Hache,  one  of  the  domestics  ad 
2'itaiii,  was  so  pleased  with  the  gift  of  two  handkerchiefs  that  he 
asked  for  and  received  two  more.  The  Superior  then  started  on 
a  round  of  visits,  ending  up  with  the  ladies  of  the  Ursulines  and 
Madame  de  la  Peltrie,  whose  presents  he  had  forgotten  to  mention. 
To  each  of  his  fellow  priests  and  the  brothers  he  distributed  some- 
thing from  his  own  little  stock  of  treasures,  nor  did  he  forget 
those  at  Sillery. 

^  These  kindly  remembrances  did  not  cease  on  the  first  day  of 
the  month,  for  the  Governor  on  the  3rd  sent  the  good  Fathers 
three  capons  and  ten  pigeons,  and  subsequently  their  larder  was 
replenished  by  a  cake  and  a  well-cooked  dinner  from  the  Hotel 
Dieu,  and  Mons.  Giffard  provided  a  bottle  of  hypocras,  with  which 
to  wash  down  the  good  things.  And  when  Ics  jours  gras  came 
round,  the  ladies  of  the  Ursuline  and  the  Hotel  Dieu  vied  with  one 
another  in  fortifying  the  Fathers  for  the  fast  which  was  impend- 
ing, the  severity  of  which,  however,  was  somewhat  mitigated  by 
the  thoughtfulness  of  the  Governor,  who  never  forgot  to  send 


320  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

them  fresh  fish  twice  a  week  during  Lent.  They  returned  the 
comphment  with  two  jars  of  ohves. 

The  painbhiit  became  again  a  matter  of  controversy.  ^Madame 
Marsolet,  who  was  to  make  it  for  the  Sunday  before  Septuagesima, 
presented  it  on  napkins,  and  surmounted  it  with  a  cross  of  gauze. 
She  wished  in  addition  to  decorate  it  with  candles,  but  the  Fathers 
thought  this  departure  from  simphcity  smacked  of  vanity  and 
ostentation,  and  might  not  only  excite  jealousy,  but  possibly  give 
offence  to  His  Excellency,  who.  when  he  provided  the  pain  bemt, 
had  not  indulged  in  such  extravagances.  For  these  excellent  rea- 
sons all  the  accessories  were  removed. 

Questions  of  precedence  were  also  rife,  for  on  Candlemas  Day 
the  Fathers,  wishing  to  show  no  preference,  after  sending  a  wax 
candle  to  the  Governor,  cut  up  their  stock  into  115  bits,  and  distrib- 
uted them,  without  discrimination,  together  with  the  pain  be'nit. 
Though  there  was  not  enough  to  go  roiuid,  no  occasion  was  given 
for  jealousy. 

On  ]\Iarch  i6th  the  Chapel  of  the  Hotel  Dieu  was  dedicated. 
On  April  17th  the  river  was  free  from  ice,  and  shortly  afterward 
the  Father  Superior  ascended  it  to  attend  to  his  ecclesiastical  duties 
at  Three  Rivers.  On  his  return  he  notes  the  following  catalogue 
of  incidents,  which  all  help  to  illustrate  the  lights  and  shadows  of 
the  picturesque  life  of  the  mixed  population  of  zealous  churchmen, 
reckless  adventurers,  and  Indian  savages. 

hem. — The  death  of  good  Father  Masse,  and  his  burial  at  the 
scene  of  his  labors  at  Sillery,  where  his  bones  repose  to  this  day.* 

Item. — A  quarrel  between  an  Iroquois  and  an  Abenaki,  which 
resulted  in  the  Iroquois  transfixing  with  a  sword  a  squaw  instead 
of  his  intended  victim.  The  quarrel  was  accommodated  in  Indian 
fashion  by  the  parents  of  the  unfortunate  woman. 

Item. — A  duel  with  swords  between  two  servants  of  the  Ur- 
sulines  ;  results  not  stated. 

Item. — Another  duel  between  two  soldiers  at  Three  Rivers, 
which  resulted  in  the  wounding  of  La  Groie  and  the  imprisonment 

*  The  foundations  of  the  old  Chapel  of  Sillery  can  be  traced  near  a  substan- 
tial stone  house,  on  the  beach,  which  was  probably  attached  to  the  mission. 


A    NOTABLE    PROCESSION.  321 

of  his  antagonist,  La  Fontaine,  who  was  adjudged  to  be  in  tlie 
wrong  on  the  testimony  of  an  Inchan.  DuelHng  seems  to  have 
been  a  common  practice,  even  with  the  rank  and  file  of  society ;  and 
it  is  noteworthy  that  an  Indian's  testimony  was  received  as  good, 
even  against  a  Frenchman. 

Item. — A  fire  destroyed  Guillaume  Bance's  house,  and  all  he 
had,  but  his  neighbors  came  so  liberally  to  his  assistance  that  he 
was  set  firmly  on  his  feet  again.  The  Fathers  gave  permission  to 
work  on  St.  Barnabe's  day  to  all  who  would  help  Bance  to  rebuild, 
and  fifteen  responded  to  the  call. 

Item. — The  theft  from  a  poor  man's  chest  of  all  he  had  in  the 
world,  to  the  value  of  twenty-five  ecus.  It  was  the  first  instance 
of  petty  thieving  in  the  colony,  and  the  Father  deplored  and  re- 
buked it  from  the  pulpit. 

Item. — A  certain  Thomas,  of  Huguenot  proclivities,  abjured 
his  errors  and  made  profession  of  faith ;  and  a  Huron  convert  was 
baptized  in  the  Ursuline  chapel. 

Item: — Brother  Ambrose  was  told  ofif  from  May  ist  to  20th  to 
make  malt  and  brew  beer  for  the  House  of  Notre  Dame  des 
Anges ;  and  to  Brother  Feaute  and  Robert  Hache  was  assigned 
the  pleasant  duty  of  fishing  on  May  15th,  but  it  was  June  nth  be- 
fore the  first  salmon  was  caught. 

The  Fete  Dieu  was  this  year  celebrated  with  more  than 
usual  devotion,  and  the  account  of  the  procession  is  given  with 
much  detail.  The  canopy  was  carried  by  M.  Tronquet,  nominated 
by  the  Governor,  the  two  church  wardens,  M.  Gififard  and  Chas- 
telets,  and  an  Indian  convert,  Noel  Negabamat.  Conspicuous 
figures  were  six  French  angels  and  two  little  Indians  in  native 
costume,  carrying  corporal  cases.  The  torch  bearers  were  drawn 
from  the  ranks  of  the  six  principal  trades  of  the  town — carpenters, 
masons,  sailors,  toolmakers,  brewers  and  bakers.  The  farmers 
seem  not  to  have  been  represented.  The  procession  started,  to  the 
ringing  of  bells,  from  the  temporary  Parish  Church  in  the  Com- 
pany's offices,  situated  somewhere  to  the  east  or  west  of  Garden 
street,  probably  within  the  enclosure  of  the  present  English  Ca- 
thedral.    It  crossed  the  open  space  and  rested  near  "The  Tree,' 


322  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVEXTEEXTH   CENTURY. 

where  the  host  was  sakitcd  by  a  salvo  of  artillery.*  Thence 
the  procession  moved  to  the  Hotel  Dieu,  the  Hospitalieres 
claiming  a  certain  precedence  over  the  Ursulines,  as 
their  Hospital  building  was  by  two  whole  years  of  greater 
age  than  the  convent.  It  was  saluted  by  a  volley  of  mus- 
ketry, as  it  passed  behind  the  house  of  AI.  Couillard,  which 
was  probably  near  the  present  seminary  wing.  It  may  then  have 
wended  its  way  across  Hope  Hill,  and  through  the  Hospital's  own 
grounds,  which  at  that  time  covered  nearly  all  the  portion  of  the 
present  town  comprised  within  Hope,  Fabrique  and  Palace 
streets,  to  its  recently  consecrated  chapel.  In  returning,  it  rested  at 
Mons.  Couillard's  altar,  where  it  was  saluted  by  musketry.  In  re- 
tracing its  course  to  the  Parish  Church,  it  was  again  saluted  by  the 
cannon  of  the  Fort ;  then  it  passed  to  the  Ursuline  Convent  under 
an  arch  of  a  bridge,  which  is  more  than  once  mentioned  as  a 
feature  of  the  Company's  house.  It  was  probably  a  covered  way 
between  two  buildings,  as  we  learn  that  the  Jesuits,  before  trying 
to  warm  their  chapel  for  Christmas  midnight  mass,  experimented 
with  braziers  or  stoves  on  this  bridge.  In  1640  the  Governor  sent 
a  company  of  soldiers  to  salute  the  Fathers  by  a  discharge  of  their 
arquebuses  at  the  end  of  the  bridge,  which  may  then  have  only 
been  in  process  of  construction. 

The  Jesuit  estates  meanwhile  grew  and  were  judiciously  cared 
for  and  cultivated,  although  the  price  of  labor  was  high,  that  is  to 
say,  from  thirty  to  tliirty-five  sols  a  day  and  board,  as  we  gather 
from  an  entry  in  June.  Father  Lalemant  was  employing  Etienne 
Bongoust  as  a  millwright  to  assist  in  building  a  new  mill,  after 
clearing  off  what  wood  remained  on  their  cow  pasture  on  the 
Pointe  aux  Lievres.  the  spit  of  land  on  which  the  ^Marine  Hos- 
pital now  stands.  Where  to  erect  the  new  mill  was  a  mooted 
question,  which  had  to  be  decided  soon,  as  the  old  mill  at  the 
mission  was  falling  to  pieces.     The  society  decided  on  exchang- 

*  ^"-The  Tree"  was  probably  that  magnificent  elm  which  stood  in  the  north- 
east corner  of  the  Cathedral  close,  till  about  1849,  when  it  was  blown  down  dur- 
ing a  violent  storm.  Tradition  said  that  under  it  Jacques  Cartier  held  council 
with  the  Indians.  A  section  of  it  was  deposited  in  the  museum  of  the  Literary 
and  Historical  Society,  but  it  was  burned,  with  most  of  the  Society's  collection,  in 
the  Parliament  Building  in  1854. 


JESUIT    TITLES    TO    LAND.  323 

ing  six  acres  which  they  owned  in  the  city  for  eighteen  lying  be- 
tween the  Vacherie  (cow  pasture)  and  the  foot  of  Cote  St. 
Genevieve,  and  somewhere  on  the  latter  property  the  new 
mill  was  built.  But  Montmagny  would  cede  the  land  only  en 
roture.  This  led  the  Superior  to  examine  the  titles  under  which 
the  several  concessions  made  to  the  society  were  held,  and,  to  use 
his  own  words :  "1  found  that  those  of  our  six  hundred  arpents  of 
land  at  Three  Rivers,  granted  in  1634,  conferred  a  perfect  title  up- 
on us  without  any  charge,  in  full  property  and  lordship,  ut  rex 
concesserat  concedentihus.  As  regards  the  letters  patent  for  the 
lands  of  Notre  Dame  des  Anges,  Beauport,  and  la  Vacherie, 
dated  1637,  I  found  no  charge  upon  such  concessions  beyond  the 
saying  of  a  mass  every  year— with  no  other  dues — and  the  ac- 
knowledgment of  concession  every  twenty  years ;  but  there  is  no 
mention  of  any  seignorial  right.  As  for  the  titles  to  those  of  Isle 
aux  Ruaux,  they  are  also  very  good,  and  similar  to  that  ol  Three 
Rivers.  As  for  the  Isle  de  Jesus,  there  is  no  deed  on  parchment ; 
there  is  merely  an  extract  from  the  proceedings  of  the  General 
Assembly  and  a  certificate  of  taking  possession  by  Monsieur  the 
Governor,  which  mentions  a  mandate  he  had  received,  in  virtue 
whereof  he  so  put  us  in  possession,  without  mention  of  any 
condition. 

"Those  which  were  conceded  to  Monsieur  Giffard,  des  Chaste- 
lets,  etc.,  confer  more  seignorial  rights,  but  are  also  subject  to 
many  more  charges. 

"The  most  disadvantageous  are  those  of  Sillery,  which,  being 
ours  only  by  a  transfer  made  by  Monsieur  Gant,  are  also  subject  to 
all  the  charges  borne  by  him,  and  among  others  a  rent  of  a  denier 
an  arpent. 

"About  this  time,  the  Hospital  nuns  having — in  consequence  of 
what  had  been  procured  for  them  at  the  Long  Point  and  at  the  Isle 
of  Orleans — given  up  the  document  signed  by  Father  Vimont,  by 
which  they  had  been  granted  some  meadows  on  our  lands  for  six 
years.  Father  Vimont  notified  the  Ursulines  that  they  would  have 
to  do  the  same.  They  found  it  hard  to  comply,  and  requested  that, 
in  case  that  were  done — to  wit,  taking  our  meadows  from  them,  in 
order  to  lease  them — they  should  be  preferred  to  others.     The 


324  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

conclusion  was  that,  until  they  had  been  assured  of  what  had  been 
assigned  to  them  at  Long  Point  and  on  the  Island  of  Orleans,  we 
should  reserve  for  them  fifteen  or  sixteen  arpents  of  land — which 
we  should  dispose  of,  when  they  should  have  received  the  above 
assurance — and  should  dispose  of  the  others,  there  being  still  fif- 
teen or  sixteen  arpents  more  to  be  granted.  In  all,  from  the 
(river)  Cabanne-aux-Topiers  to  Monsieur  Giffard's  river,  there 
are  forty-seven  arpents ;  seventeen  are  to  be  reserved  for  the  farm 
at  Beauport,  and  the  remainder  granted  as  above." 

The  social  event  of  the  summer  was  the  marriage  of  Mont- 
pellier,  who  was  both  a  soldier  and  a  cobbler,  to  the  daughter  of 
Sevestre.  At  the  dance  a  kind  of  ballet  was  performed  by  five  of 
his  comrades,  but  the  Fathers  expressed  their  disapproval.  The 
salmon  fishing  was  good  that  summer.  A  present  of  fish  came 
from  Tadousac,  and  tlie  Governor's  and  their  own  catch  numbered 
200  up  to  the  end  of  July. 

On  the  fete  day  of  St.  Ignatius,  the  Governor  wished  to  fire  a 
salute  on  the  celebration  of  the  ordinaire,  but  as  it  was  only  a  /efe 
de  devotion^  and  not  a  fete  d' obligation,  and  as  the  spring  fleet  had 
not  arrived,  though  July  was  well  nigh  ended,  the  Fathers,  with 
thoughtful  consideration,  declined  His  Excellency's  ofifer,  lest  the 
salute  should  be  supposed  to  announce  the  sighting  of  the  fleet. 
The  citizens  had  that  summer  to  wait  long  for  the  ships,  as  the  first 
one  did  not  cast  anchor  till  tlie  20th  September,  and  the  last  on  the 
14th  of  October. 

The  Superior  made  his  annual  journey  to  Three  Rivers  in  Au- 
gust, taking  with  him,  among  others,  a  mason,  at  100  livres  of 
wages  a  year.  There  he  met  Gilles  Bacon,  hurrying  down  to  lay 
before  the  Governor  the  news  of  the  discovery  of  gold  and  copper, 
and  to  confirm  his  story  with  specimens — the  second  representa- 
tive of  the  great  army  of  prospectors  and  promoters  ;  Jacques  Car- 
tier,  with  his  flakes  of  mica  and  his  quartz  crystals,  having  been 
the  first. 

This  was  the  second  year  of  the  habitants'  compromise  with  the 
Company  of  the  One  Hundred  Associates.  The  people's  company 
did  a  larger  business  than  in  the  previous  year,  shipping  160  poin- 
90ns  of  beaver  skins  of  200  livres  each,  or  32,000  pounds,  as 


RENEWAL  OF   DISCONTENT.  325 

against  19,600  in  1645 — the  value  being  the  same  each  year,  10 
francs  the  Hvre. 

The  returning  fleet  had  its  full  complement  of  passengers.  The 
management  of  the  popular  company,  notwithstanding  that  the 
shipment  of  furs  so  greatly  exceeded  that  of  the  previous  year,  had 
led  to  very  general  discontent.  And  M.  des  Chastelets,  the  manag- 
er, came  in  for  his  full  share  of  abuse.  The  Fathers  had  thought 
that  the  Governor's  summary  punishment  of  those  who  started  the 
agitation  in  the  previous  January  had  completely  allayed  it,  though 
he  had  done  nothing  towards  removing  the  alleged  grievances. 
They  and  he  soon  discovered  their  mistake,  for  now  nearly  every 
man  of  influence  was  bound  for  France  to  press  a  claim  or  lodge  a 
complaint.  Possibly  the  term  fripons — rogues — which  the  Father 
applies  to  several  of  the  most  respectable  of  the  grumblers,  may 
have  been  deserved ;  but  whether  it  was  or  not,  it  shows  that 
feeling  was  running  high  in  the  colony. 

The  eel  fishery  had  been  prosperous — the  catch  amounting  to 
40,000,  which  sold  at  one-half  an  ecu  the  hundred.  Cord  wood 
was  selling  at  100  sols,  more  than  twice  the  price  of  1645,  so 
that  few  could  afford  to  buy  a  whole  cord  at  a  time;  and 
the  Father  complains  that  the  half-cord  really  did  not  measure 
more  than  three  feet  (instead  of  four),  and  that  the  wood 
was  bad  at  that.  It  is  evident  that  every  one  was  hard  up 
and  discontented,  and  inclined  to  put  the  worst  construction  on 
his  neighbor's  conduct,  and  that  the  Fathers  themselves  had  not 
escaped  the  epidemic  of  captiousness. 

The  last  day  of  the  year  was  celebrated  by  a  comedy  played  at 
the  company's  store  in  the  presence  of  the  Governor,  and  attended 
by  several  of  the  Fathers  and  some  of  the  Indians ;  but  the  priests 
were  not  willing  to  sanction  by  their  presence  the  Mardi  Gras 
dance.  Marrying  and  giving  in  marriage  went  on  as  usual,  and 
there  were  some  embarrassing  cases  of  conscience  and  breaches  of 
promise.  One  was  that  of  an  Indian  girl,  who  had  been  educated 
by  the  Ursulines.  She  had  been  wooed  by  a  French  lad,  and 
had  promised  to  marry  him,  but  when  the  engagement  had  to  be 
fulfilled,  she  refused  him  in  favor  of  a  man  of  her  own  race. 


326  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

1647. 

It  was  a  mild  winter  and  spring  set  in  early.  Fires  were  sel- 
dom needed  in  the  chapel  during  mass,  and  the  wine  froze  only 
once  in  the  chalice.  But  it  was  an  anxious  winter.  Small  bands 
of  Iroquois  hovered  around,  picking  off  Algonquin  hunters  who 
separated  from  their  party ;  but  the  Fathers  knew  nothing  of  the 
fate  of  their  colleague,  Father  Jogues,  of  whose  cruel  martyrdom 
they  only  heard  on  June  the  5th.  They  were  busy  getting  out,  and 
hauling  to  its  site,  the  lumber  for  their  new  college,  for  the 
foundation  of  which  they  began  blasting  before  the  frost  was  out 
of  the  ground. 

An  entry  in  the  Journal  of  June,  1647,  informs  us  that  the  ships 
brought  out  the  first  horse  imported  into  the  country,  as  a  present 
from  the  people  to  their  Governor.*  They  also  brought  news  of  the 
constitution  under  which  the  three  towns  of  Montreal,  Quebec  and 
Three  Rivers  might  appoint  syndics,  who  should  represent  them  in 
Council.  The  people  were  in  greater  haste  to  avail  themselves  of 
their  freshly-acquired  privileges  than  the  Governor  was  to  give  his 
consent — notwithstanding  the  present  of  the  horse.  He  had  not 
been  ofiticially  notified. 

'  Considering  the  progress  of  the  colony  and  the  vocal  resources 
at  the  command  of  the  Cliurch,  the  Jesuits  decided  to  say  high 
mass  with  proper  accompaniments,  instead  of  performing  the  holy 
office  in  the  irregular  way  heretofore  of  necessity  followed,  which 
shocked  new  comers  from  Old  France. 

An  entry  in  the  same  month  of  June  tells  of  the  seizure  of  260 
lbs.  of  beaver  skins  in  the  rooms  of  the  Chaplain  of  the  Ursulines. 
This  evidently  raised  the  question  of  their  own  right  to  trade,  and 
of  that  of  their  parishioners  at  Sillery,  which  had  become  a  trading 
post  of  some  importance.  They  decided  that  it  was  not  becoming 
that  they  should  themselves  engage  in  trade,  but  that  the  inhabi- 
tants of  Sillery.  in  virtue  of  their  natural  rights,  and  the  King's 
permission,  might,  if  the  store  refused  to  pay  a  reasonable  price 
for  their  peltries,  trade  on  their  own  account. 

*  In  June  of  the  year  previous  the  Governor,  when  negotiating  with  the 
Jesuit  Fathers  about  the  exchange  of  the  eighteen  acres  in  the  St.  Charles  Valley 
for  the  six  acres  in  the  town,  went  to  confer  with  the  Brothers  Liegeoiie-— J«r /<j 
monture.     What  did  he  ride.' 


JOTTINGS  FROM   THE  JOURNAL.  327 

On  the  28th  July  the  old  barn  was  set  on  fire  by  a  careless 
smoker,  and  one  of  their  servants  was  burned  to  death.  As  he 
was  a  confirmed  drunkard  and  died  without  any  signs  of  re- 
pentance, they  buried  him  in  unconsecrated  ground. 

In  August  came  the  official  authority  to  form  a  colonial  council, 
on  which  the  Jesuits  were  to  be  represented  by  their  Superior. 
Four  of  the  Fathers  held  a  deliberation  as  to  whether  it  would  be 
wise  to  accept  the  post  and  its  responsibilities.  The  decision  was 
in  the  affirmative. 

It  was  a  dull  season,  and  trade  was  bad,  as  the  Hurons  did  not 
venture  to  descend  the  Ottawa. 

1648. 

In  February  Father  de  Ouen  made  a  missionary  journey  along 
the  Beauport  and  Beaupre  beach  to  Cap  Tourmente,  returning  by 
the  Island  of  Orleans.  He  puts  the  population  at  200,  and  the 
number  of  communicants  at  140.  There  were  evidently  fewer 
families  in  proportion  to  bachelors  than  at  a  later  period.  And  how 
rural  was  still  the  state  of  the  city  is  indicated  by  the  entry  relat- 
ing to  the  death  and  burial  of  Mme.  Drouin  in  the  same  month  of 
February.  The  road  was  so  narrow  that  they  could  not  convey  the 
body  to  the  cemetery  on  a  sleigh — it  had  to  be  carried  by  two  men. 

There  was  the  usual  interchange  of  good  things  at  Mardi  Gras. 
Among  the  delicacies  sent  to  the  Fathers  by  the  Governor  was  a 
quarter  of  moose  meat.  It  is  incidentally  mentioned  that  four 
moose  Vv-ere  killed,  whence  we  may  infer  that  they  were  not  tlien 
very  much  more  numerous  than  at  present. 

It  was  a  busy  winter,  and  there  must  have  been  work  for  all. 
Ten  or  twelve  men  were  in  the  woods  getting  out  lumber  for  the 
Jesuit  College.  A  wing  was  being  added  to  the  Fort,  and  a  parish 
church  was  under  erection.  Perhaps  it  was  the  abundance  of 
work  and  money  which  accounted  for  four  unfortunates  being 
condemned  to  ride  the  wooden  horse  for  drunkenness. 

If  the  roads  were  narrow  in  winter,  they  were  so  muddy  when 
the  snow  was  melting  that  it  was  feared  that  the  procession  on 
the  feast  of  St.  Mark,  April  25th,  would  have  to  be  omitted. 
Finally  it  was  deemed  better  to  plod  through  the  mud  than  not  to 
honor  the  saint. 


328  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

On  the  feast  of  St.  Michael,  May  7th,  the  Fathers  celebrated 
vespers  at  their  house  of  Notre  Dame  cles  Anges,  and  afterwards 
served  a  supper,  observing  most  punctiliously  the  gradations  of 
rank  of  their  guests.  The  Governor  and  Ics  plus  honnetes  gens 
were  regaled  in  the  refectory.  The  musicians,  who  had  assisted 
in  the  chapel,  were  served  in  the  petite  salle.  For  the  sailors 
tables  were  set  in  the  carpenter's  shop,  and  the  rest,  including  the 
soldiers,  were  accommodated  in  the  large  room.  The  Governor 
went  to  the  service  and  the  entertainment  by  boat,  but,  the  tide 
having  run  down,  he  returned  on  foot.  What  had  become  of  the 
horse  ? 

On  Rogation  Sunday  the  procession  was  formed  after  vespers. 
It  encircled  the  fields  on  Cape  Diamond,  and  returned  by  the 
Grande  Allee.  As  this  was  the  festival  when  prayers  are  offered 
for  a  good  harvest,  and  the  bounds  of  the  parish  are  beaten,  or 
defined  by  the  procession,  w'e  may  assume  that  most  of  the  houses 
were  built  on  the  slope  above  the  present  St.  Louis  Street,  and 
that  the  ground  now  occupied  by  the  Glacis — not  then,  of  course, 
graded  as  at  present — was  cleared  and  under  cultivation. 

On  St.  John  the  Baptist's  day  the  old  custom  of  lighting  the 
bonfire  was  practiced  by  Governor  Montmagny,  who  always  sent 
for  the  Fathers  to  assist  in  the  ceremony.  It  was  a  curious  custom, 
one  the  traces  of  which  are  very  widespread,  and  still  perpetuated 
in  Rome — the  ancient  Festival  of  Ceres.  Dancing  and  merrymak- 
ing" are  indulged  in,  and  fires  are  lighted  to  drive  away  evil  spirits 
bent  on  destroying  the  harvest,  then  ripe  and  ready  for  reaping  in 
Italy,  though  not  in  Canada.  A  couple  of  years  later  the  Father 
Superior  seems  to  have  had  some  misgivings  as  to  the  wisdom  of 
countenancing  and  perpetuating  the  custom.  The  reason  given 
for  not  thinking  it  proper  to  encourage  the  custom  is  that  Mont- 
magny did  not  practice  it — a  strange  lapse  of  memory,  probably, 
on  Father  Ragueneau's  part,  who  was  joint  author  of  the  Journal 
that  year  with  Father  Lalemant. 

Though  the  upper  lake  trade  was  cut  off,  Tadousac  did  a  thriv- 
ing business  of  over  224,000  pounds  of  beaver  skins. 

That  enterprisir.g  citizen,  M.  Abraham  Martin,  inaugurated 
this  sumnir-r  seal  fishing,  and  his  first  venture  was  successful,  for 


AN  EXECUTION   1-OR  THEFT.  329 

he  and  his  two  nephews  kihed  on  Isle  Rouge  forty-two  seals,  from 
which  they  extracted  six  harrels  of  oil.  Ptarmigan  this  year  flocked 
from  the  north  in  such  numbers — a  phenomenon  seen  occasionally 
in  our  own  times — that  more  than  1,200  were  killed. 

Gov.  Montmagny  disappears  and  d'Aillebout  takes  his  place. 
As  the  full  factum  of  the  inaugural  ceremonies  was  embodied 
in  a  separate  document  by  Father  Lalemant,  and  not  entered  in 
the  Journal,  we  are  unfortunately  deprived  of  it. 

1649. 

In  January  and  February  the  first  executions  at  the  hands  of 
the  public  hangman  took  place.  The  first  victim  was  a  girl  {unc 
creature)  of  sixteen,  convicted  of  theft.  The  crime  of  the  other 
is  not  named.  It  was  only  in  the  previous  September  that  the 
sentence  of  a  drummer,  convicted  of  a  heinous  crime  and  con- 
demned to  death,  was  commuted  on  condition  of  his  becoming  the 
public  executioner.  The  hangman  having  been  secured,  work  was 
soon  found  for  him! 

During  Holy  Week  "the  Ursuline  nuns  committed  the  aston- 
ishing mistake  of  not  keeping  three  triangular  candlesticks  on  the 
altar  during  the  tenebrae  of  the  third  day,  nor  any  candles  except 
two  white  ones  lighted  during  the  first  and  second  days." 

As  soon  as  the  ice  broke  up,  boats  were  sent  to  Three  Rivers 
and  Montreal  for  tidings.  They  returned  with  reports  of  famine 
everywhere,  to  relieve  which  forty  barrels  of  wheat,  peas  and  malt- 
grist  were  with  all  haste  sent  to  the  sufferers. 

While  the  colonists  were  straining  every  nerve  to  succor  their 
countrymen  and  savage  allies,  a  band  of  Abenakis,  with  letters 
from  New  England,  came  up  the  river  also  soliciting  relief ;  l)ut 
they  received  the  cold  shoulder.  Troubles  were  accumulating  fast, 
for  during  the  same  months  came  the  terrible  news  of  the  Huron 
massacres  and  the  martyrdom  of  their  confreres  on  the  Georgian 
Bay.  Then  in  August  the  Fathers  heard  of  the  wreck  of  a  new 
ship  on  her  voyage  from  France,  with  4,000  livres  worth  of  their 
property — so  badly  needed. 

In  September  some  Frenchmen  eluded  the  Iroquois,  and  ar- 
rived from  the  Huron  country  with  5,000  pounds  of-beaver  skins, 
which,  as  they  sold  for  5  fr.  5  sols  the  pound,  were  worth  26,000 


330  QUEBEC  IX  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

livres ;  with  them  were  two  soldiers  who  brought  down  747 
pounds  additional,  which  sold  for  4  francs  the  pound.  These 
independent  traders  evidently  did  better  than  the  Company, 
whose  total  shipments  of  peltries  amounted  to  only  100  poingons 
— worth  100,000  francs. 

The  following;  notes  conclude  the  Journal  for  that  year.    A  fee 
of   20   sols  was   levied  besides   his  fare  from  each  passenger  to 
France  and  paid  to  the  Governor's  secretary;  he  and  other  offi- 
cials also  got  a  share  of  the  fines  imposed. 

Work  was  commenced  on  the  defenses  of  Sillery  at  the  public 
expense.   As  events  proved,  it  was  labor  and  money  thrown  away. 

The  walls  of  the  Jesuit  College  were  raised,  and  the  roof 
thrown  over  it,  but  the  interior  was  not  completed.  There  were 
now  so  many  Jesuit  priests  that  one  could  be  spared  to  say  mass 
at  Beauport  every  Sunday  and  feast  day. 

1650. 

In  April  there  was  a  council  of  the  Jesuit  Fathers  to  decide  two 
important  questions : 

I. — Whether  a  colony  of  Hurons  should  be  established  on 
their  Beauport  lands.  The  first  massacre  of  that  unfortunate  race 
on  the  Georgian  Bay,  whither  they  had  fled  from  their  old  home 
on  the  St.  Lawrence,  had  filled  the  colony  with  horror  and  their 
ardent  friends,  the  missionaries,  with  fearful  forebodings.  The 
disposal  of  the  remnant  of  the  race,  which  was  only  carried  into 
efifect  after  the  second  massacre,  was  evidently  even  then  sug- 
gested to  the  minds  of  their  Jesuit  protectors  as  an  approaching 
necessity,  for  they  decided  to  permit  certain  selected  families  to 
settle  on  their  lands  at  Beauport,  and  appropriated  500  ecus  an- 
nually towards  their  support.  Before  this  merciful  purpose  could 
be  carried  out.  all  that  had  not  been  destroyed  or  dispersed  of  the 
once  powerful  nation  of  20,000  Hurons,  had  to  be  provided  for 
without  discrimination  on  the  Island  of  Orleans.  It  is  interesting 
to  compare  the  willingness  with  which  the  good  Fathers  proposed 
to  receive  on  their  lands  so  many  impecunious  Indian  tenants, 
with  their  reluctance  to  permit  the  two  communities  of  nuns  to 
occupy  a  strip  of  the  same  tract.  The  former  transaction  was  in 
their  eves  a  work  of  religious  charitv — the   latter  a  matter  of 


TORTURE  OF  AN   INDIAN  CAPTIVE.  33 1 

business  witli  business  woinen,  wbosc  salvation  was  bappily  not  in 
question.  They  were  careful,  shrewd  men  of  affairs  themselves, 
and  the  heads  of  the  convents  and  their  advisers  have  seldom  been 
lacking  in  worldly  wisdom. 

II. — The  second  subject  of  debate  was  settled  in  a  manner 
equally  creditable  to  their  public  spirit.  In  the  previous  year 
2,oco  livres  had  been  appropriated,  but  the  sum  had  not  yet  been 
paid  out  of  the  public  purse,  towards  the  erection  of  their  house 
and  college  at  Three  Rivers.  But,  as  they  had  received  6,000 
livres  from  the  public  as  a  contribution  towards  their  college  in 
Quebec,  they  decided  that  it  would  be  demanding  too  much  to 
exact  the  payment  of  the  other  donation. 

Barbarous  associations  continued  to  produce  their  unhappy  ef- 
fects, as  we  see  by  the  willingness  of  the  French  authorities  to 
turn  over  an  Indian  captive  to  his  tormentors,  as  told  in  the  Jour- 
nal of  June  15th.  On  the  evening  of  that  day  a  Huron  arrived, 
named  Skandahietse,  who  pretended  to  have  been  sent  as  an  am- 
bassador by  the  Iroquois,  and  to  have  hidden  by  the  way  two 
wampum  belts,  which  he  was  bearing  as  a  pledge  of  peace,  fearing 
lest  they  should  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  Algonquins.  When 
cross-questioned  he  contradicted  himself  so  glaringly  that  he  was 
seized,  tried  as  a  spy,  and  condemned  to  death.  But,  before  he 
was  turned  over  to  his  Indian  enemies,  he  was  baptized  by  the 
name  of  Louis. 

The  Christmas  midnight  mass  was  celebrated  in  the  new 
parish  church,  on  the  site  of  the  present  Basilica.  The  edifice  had 
been  for  three  years  under  construction,  and  was  not  finished  and 
consecrated  till  1657. 

The  summer  had  been  a  very  sad  one.  Entry  after  entry  in  the 
Journal  records  the  death  of  an  Indian  convert,  or  of  a  country- 
man, at  the  hands  of  the  Iroquois  fiends.  It  must  therefore  have 
been  with  relief,  yet  with  terrible  foreboding,  that  Father  Lale- 
mant  sailed  for  France,  and  turned  over  his  office  as  Superior,  and 
the  volume  of  the  Journal,  to  his  successor,  Father  Ragueneau. 


CHAPTER    XVI. 

The  Administration  of  Governor  de  Lauzon  and  the 
Failure  of  Nepotism. 

De  Lauzon's  long  connection  with  the  Company  as  In- 
tendant  pointed  him  out  as  a  suitable  successor  to  Governor 
d'Aillebout;  though  had  the  great  Car(hnal  been  alive,  his  keen 
discrimination  would  have  detected  traits  in  de  Lauzon's  charac- 
ter which  wholly  unfitted  him  for  independent  command.  But  long 
before  Montmagny's  term  had  expired,  the  Cardinal's  life  had 
ebbed,  and  his  shadow,  Louis  XIIL,  had  followed  the  vanish- 
ing minister  to  the  grave.  A  still  more  anomalous  pair  of  rulers 
succeeded  the  masterful  statesman,  and  his  pliant  master,  in  the 
persons  of  the  vain  and  erratic  Anne  of  Austria  and  her  hand- 
some, crafty  adviser.  Cardinal  Mazarin.  Nevertheless,  although 
Richelieu  was  no  more,  his  policy  was  still  the  controlling  influence 
in  colonial  affairs.  jMazarin  recognized  the  truth  that  colonies 
unprotected  by  a  navy  are  an  easy  prey  to  the  enemy,  and  simply 
invite  war.  He,  therefore,  fostered  the  construction  of  a  navy, 
to  whose  guns  the  fishing  fleet,  the  mercantile  marine,  and  the 
struggling  colony  across  the  sea  might  look  for  protection.  In 
so  doing  he  was  carr\-ing  out  what  had  been  one  of  the  dearest 
projects  of  his  great  predecessor.  The  humiliating  loss  of  Quebec 
had  taught  Richelieu  so  deep  a  lesson,  that  notwithstanding  the 
extreme  exhaustion  of  the  resources  of  France  consequent  on  his 
wars — successful  and  glorious  though  they  were — with  Spain  and 
Austria,  he  hastened  to  build  up  a  fleet  of  fifty-six  war  vessels. 
His  name  remains  associated  with  the  rapids  on  the  St.  Lawrence 
sixty  miles  above  Quebec,  and  with  the  river,  previously  known  as 
the  Riviere  des  Iroquois,  which  formed  the  most  important 
strategical  highway  between  the  great  river  and  the  Hudson.  His 
pious  niece,  the  founder  of  the  Hotel  Dieu.  gave  her  name  to  the 
Rue  d'Aiguillon  in  Quebec,  which  was  then  the  principal  thor- 


^N    ODIOUS    ADMINISTRATION. 


333 


oiighfare  between  the  city  proper  and  the  settlement  that  had 
gathered  around  the  mission  house  of  Notre  Dame  des  Anges  in 
the  valley  of  the  St.  Charles. 

On  the  other  hand  Mazarin,  the  Italian  priest,  and  Anne,  the 
Spanish  princess,  have  left  no  mark,  however  faint,  on  the  nomen- 
clature of  Quebec  topography,  and  as  little  on  the  political  institu- 
tions of  the  colony,  unless  the  nomination  of  Laval  as  Bishop, 
which  was  made  at  Mazarin's  suggestion,  through  the  influence  of 
the  Queen  Mother,  was  the  fruit  of  the  Cardinal's  policy.  His 
whole  thought  and  energy  were  absorbed  in  directing  France's 
foreign  wars,  and  his  marvellous  diplomatic  skill  found  ample 
scope  in  wrenching  from  France's  enemy  the  full  benefits  deriv- 
able from  the  victory  won  in  the  field.  Unlike  his  predecessor,  he 
paid  little  attention  to  the  internal  wants  of  the  kingdom,  still  less 
to  the  woeful  plight  of  her  colonies. 

Governor  succeeded  governor  during  Mazarin's  administra- 
tion, and  the  minority  of  Louis  XIV.,  each  less  notable  than  his 
predecessor,  between  the  date  of  de  Lauzon's  appearance  on  the 
scene  and  the  cancellation  of  the  charter  of  the  One  Hundred  As- 
sociates in  1663,  when  Canada  at  length  became  a  Crown  Colony, 
and  Louis  XIV.  and  his  minister,  Colbert,  assumed  the  responsi- 
bility of  giving  it  a  constitution  and  conducting  its  government. 

De  Lauzon  retained  office  beyond  the  allotted  period  of  three 
years.  Feeble  as  was  his  adminstration  during  its  first  years,  it 
became  subsequently  so  odious,  and  he  himself  so  unpopular  on 
account  of  his  meanness  and  parsimony,  that  he  literally  fled  from 
the  public  opprobrium  of  which  he  was  the  object,  and  from  the 
calamities  into  which  his  mistakes  were  visibly  plunging  the 
colony. 

His  administration  marked  a  departure,  which,  fortunately  for 
Canada,  was  as  shortlived  as  his  governorship.  The  Company 
had  pursued  the  only  policy  which  a  financial  company  can  pos- 
sibly follow.  It  was  created  to  make  money ;  and  it  lived  to  make 
money,  whether  successful  in  doing  so  or  not.  Nevertheless  its 
agents,  though  generally  unpopular  in  Quebec  society,  had  not 
reprehensibly  aimed  at  self  and  family  aggrandizement.  But 
de  Lauzon.  who  had  been  appointed  by  Richelieu  as  Intendant,  or 


334  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

financial  agent  of  the  Company  in  France,  acquired  by  his  in- 
fluence, or  had  conferred  on  himself,  in  1632,  the  seignory  of 
Lauzon  and  the  Island  of  Montreal.  The  latter  he  afterwards 
transferred  to  the  Maisonneuve  company.  On  his  assumption  of 
the  Governorship,  he  bestowed  on  his  son  Louis  the  seignory  of  La 
Citiere  and  Gaudarville,  so  called  after  Madame  Gaudar,  his  first 
wife  and  Louis'  mother.  He  secured  the  seignory  of  La  Prairie  for 
his  son  Fran9ois,  who,  in  1647,  transferred  it  to  the  Jesuits,  while 
his  son  Charles  was  invested  with  the  seignory  of  Chine  on  the 
Island  of  Orleans,  and  in  1656  was  also  made  the  seig- 
neur of  Levis.  Thus,  whether  acting  as  a  fiduciary  agent  of 
the  Company  in  France,  or  as  governor  in  Canada,  he  was  in- 
defatigable in  advancing  the  pecuniary  and  social  interests  of  his 
family.  His  strangest  freak  was  the  use  of  his  authority,  as  gov- 
ernor, to  create  the  office  of  Grand  Seneschal  de  la  Nouvelle 
France,  and  to  confer  on  his  son  John,  then  seventeen  years  of 
age,  this  high-sounding  title.  On  Charles  he  further  con- 
ferred the  ofiice  and  title  of  Grand  Maitre  des  Faux  et  Forets  de 
la  Nouvelle  France,  with  certain  fishing  rights  and  perquisites 
which  caused  general  resentment. 

To  secure  heirs,  his  sons  married  early,  and  took  to  wife 
colonial  girls  of  property  and  good  social  standing.  Jean, 
the  Great  Seneschal,  who  knew  so  little  law  that  a  substitute  had 
to  be  at  once  appointed,  had  come  to  Canada  when  a  mere  boy  in 
1644.  Between  that  date  and  his  appointment  as  Supreme  Judge 
he  had  served  with  distinction  in  the  French  army,  but  he  had 
not  forgotten  his  Canadian  sweetheart,  for  he  made  haste  to 
marry  her  on  the  23rd  of  October,  1651,  only  nine  days  after  he 
had  disembarked.  Charles,  the  Grand  Master  of  Waters  and 
Forests,  came  out  in  January,  1652.  He  was  a  youth  of  only 
fourteen,  yet  in  less  than  two  months  he  had  taken  to  wife  Marie 
Louise,  the  daughter  and  heiress  of  Robert  Gififard,  the  Seigneur 
of  Beauport,  a  girl  two  years  younger  than  himself.  Frangois, 
the  second  son,  notwithstanding  his  possession  of  the  seignory 
of  La  Prairie,  does  not  seem  to  have  been  able  to  ingratiate 
himself  into  the  favor  of  the  pretty  girls  o'f  Canada.  To  his 
fourth  son,  Louis  of  La  Citiere  and  Gaudarville,  de  Lauzon  had 


NEPOTISM  OF  DE  LAUZON,  335 

given  grant  after  grant  on  one  plea  or  another ;  but  Louis  was 
hard  to  please,  and  it  was  not  until  1665  that  he  married  a  girl  of 
twenty-one,  the  daughter  of  Alons.  Jacques  Nau  de  Fossambault. 
The  young  lady  in  question  had  been  sent  out  by  the  Duchess 
d'Aiguillon  as  a  nurse  and  novice  of  the  Hotel  Dieu,  but,  before 
taking  the  veil,  she  decided  that  she  was  not  intended  for  the 
religious  life. 

Thus  three  sons  of  the  ambitious  Governor  married  and  settled 
in  Canada,  yet  they  failed  to  realize  his  hopes  in  the  matter  of  per- 
petuating his  family  and  kindred.  Jean  was  killed  by  the  Iro- 
quois on  the  Island  of  Orleans  in  1661,  and  his  daughters  entered 
nunneries.  Charles  lost  his  wife  in  October,  1656,  and,  horrified 
by  the  desperate  state  of  the  colony,  which  he  was  powerless  to  im- 
prove, threw  up  his  authority  as  his  father's  gubernatorial  repre- 
sentative, sailed  to  France  and  entered  the  Church.  He  had  in- 
herited the  family  cupidity,  for,  notwithstanding  his  assumption 
of  the  religious  life,  he  never  relinquished  the  emoluments  of  his 
civil  offices,  even  after  returning  as  a  priest  with  Bishop  Laval  in 
1659.  His  only  child,  a  daughter,  entered  the  convent  in  La  Ro- 
chelle,  so  no  heirs  succeeded  to  his  empty  office. 

De  Lauzon  was  an  old  man  of  sixty-nine  when  he  came  to  Can- 
ada ;  his  failures  may,  therefore,  be  charged  to  those  who  appoint- 
ed him  rather  than  to  himself.  At  the  same  time  the  incapacity  he 
manifested  in  Canada  is  surprising,  considering  that  he  was  the 
first  Canadian  intendant  and  owed  his  appointment  to  the  creator 
of  that  order  of  functionaries,  that  he  had  been  influential  in  bring- 
ing about  the  restoration  of  Que]:)ec  to  France  after  its  capture  by 
Kirke,  and  had  exerted  considerable  influence  in  favor  of  the 
Jesuits  and  against  the  return  of  the  Recollets.  From  such  a  man 
much  might  have  been  expected,  yet,  as  Governor  of  Canada,  he 
showed  himself  utterly  unable  to  realize  the  situation  of  the  colony. 
The  same  obtuseness  which  made  him  confer  ridiculous  titles  on 
his  sons  led  him,  in  1656,  to  engage  in  foolish  schemes  of  remote 
colonization,  when  every  man  was  wanted  for  defense  at  vital 
points  on  the  St.  Lawrence. 

During  the  five  years  of  his  tenure  of  office  Quebec  grew  but 
little.     Beyond  its  fort  no  one  was  safe  from  the  Iroquois;  in- 


336  QUEBEC    IN    THE     SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

dustry,  in  consequence,  was  paralyzed  and  immigration  ceased. 
De  Lauzon  secured  for  the  colonists  a  small  body  of  troops, 
which  arrived  the  same  year  as  himself,  but  they  were  at  once  dis- 
patched to  Three  Rivers,  where  the  Governor,  de  Plessis-Bochart, 
with  a  small  body  of  militia,  which  he  had  recently  organized  and 
drilled,  attacked  a  body  of  marauding  Iroquois,  but  with  ill-suc- 
cess, for  he  was  defeated  and  killed.  It  was  a  crushing  blow,  in- 
volving the  death  or  capture  of  fifteen  armed  men.  Three  Rivers 
itself  was  seen  to  be  at  the  mercy  of  the  Iroquois  ;  and  Sillery,  with 
only  a  wooden  palisade  for  defense,  was  a  vulnerable  point.  In 
all  haste,  fortifications  were  thrown  up  around  the  Church  of 
Three  Rivers,  and  the  few  houses  and  wigwams  that  clustered 
about  it,  and  small  cannon  were  mounted,  but  the  expected  attack 
was  not  made.  Indian  tactics,  then  as  now,  forbade  their  battling 
in  the  open,  or  assaulting  fortified  positions.  The  rules  of  the  hunt- 
er are  the  rules  of  the  Indian  warrior.  By  stealth  and  subterfuge 
he  tracks  his  game,  waylays  and  kills  his  enemy,  taking  both,  if 
possible,  unawares.  On  the  skill,  secrecy,  and  noiseless  movement 
with  which  he  watches  and  strikes  his  victim,  without  needlessly 
exposing  himself,  depends  the  success  of  the  Indian  warrior ;  and 
to  these  qualities  the  Iroquois  added  tireless  energy  and  industry 
together  with  a  ceaseless  watchfulness.  They  terrorized  the 
tribes  from  Lake  Superior  to  Hudson  Bay,  and  swept  down  with 
the  same  relentless  cruelty  on  some  of  the  Atlantic  tribes,  which 
were  akin  to  themselves.  The  stealthiness  of  their  approach  and 
the  suddenness  of  their  attack  created  universal  unrest.  At  Mon- 
treal fear  became  panic,  while  in  Quebec  murder  after  murder  in 
the  vicinity,  and  the  reports  constantly  arriving  of  crimes  else- 
where, produced  a  condition  of  ceaseless  anxiety. 

Father  Jacques  Buteux,  moved  by  a  desire  to  spread  Chris- 
tianity among  the  docile  Indians  of  the  upper  St.  Maurice,  though 
in  feeble  health,  started  from  Three  Rivers  on  April  4th.  1652, 
with  a  band  of  Algonquins  and  Hurons  and  a  single  Frenchman. 
Unable  to  keep  up  with  the  party,  he  and  his  trusted  French 
companion,  with  the  Huron,  lagged  behind,  and  when  distant  a 
month's  travel  from  the  settlement,  the  two  Frenchmen  were  shot 
by  the  Iroquois  from  an  ambush,  and  the  Huron  taken  prisoner. 


RAVAGES  OF  THE  MOHAWKS.  337 

Next  year  Father  Poncet  and  a  French  layman  were  surprised 
near  Quebec  by  some  Mohawks  and  adopted  Hurons,  and  carried 
captive  to  the  JMohawk  valley,  where  the  layman  was  burnt.  The 
priest,  after  being  maimed,  was  given  to  an  old  woman  who  had 
lost  her  relations.  The  flying  column,  organized  by  Mons.  de  Ma- 
zures,  left  Quebec  under  the  command  of  Eustace  Lambert  in 
the  hope  of  recovering  him.  They  found  the  road  effectually 
blocked  by  an  overwhelming  force  of  the  enemy  at  Three  Rivers. 
They  did  good  service,  however,  at  this  point,  in  protecting  the 
almost  defenceless  hamlet,  and  in  taking  some  Iroquois  prisoners. 
Force  having  failed  to  rescue  the  captive,  negotiations  were 
opened  for  an  exchange  of  prisoners  and  for  peace,  and  to  this 
step  Mons.  Poncet  probably  owed  his  life. 

So  panic  stricken  was  Montreal  that  in  the  Spring  of  tlie  year 
a  schooner  sent  up  from  Quebec  to  receive  intelligence  of  its  wel- 
fare, returned  with  the  dismal  tidings  that  all  the  inhabitants  were 
either  dead  or  captured,  as  on  approaching  the  place  no  signs  of 
life  were  visible,  so  that  it  was  deemed  unsafe  to  investigate 
further.  One  is  reminded  of  the  first  relief  expedition  to  Khar- 
toum. After  this  the  Jesuit  Fathers  and  their  servants  had  a  re- 
spite until  1655,  when  brother  Liegeois,  while  working  in  the  field 
near  Sillery,  was  shot,  scalped,  and  decapitated  by  some  Mohawks. 
Brother  Liegeois  was  the  architect  of  the  Order,  and  was  at  the 
time  superintending  some  additional  fortifications  at  Sillery. 
Brother  Louis  Le  Boesme  was  wounded  at  the  Platon  river,  but 
escaped. 

The  list  of  the  murders  throughout  the  colony  is  a  terribly 
long  one.  Quebec  suffered  least.  As  early  as  165 1  Nicholas  Pinel 
and  his  son  Giles  were  shot  at  on  their  clearing,  but  escaped.  The 
Iroquois  then  fired  harmlessly  through  the  door  of  an  Indian  shan- 
ty, but  though  no  one  was  hurt,  the  whole  town  was  so  alarmed 
that  when  the  dogs  barked  that  night  on  the  Cote  Ste.  Genevieve, 
imaginary  Iroquois  were  seen  prowling  everywhere  in  the  dark- 
ness. Other  alarms  were  given,  and  actual  crimes  were  com- 
mitted ;  but  the  same  thing  may  have  happened  in  those  troublous 
days  as  happens  to-day  in  the  West,  when  white  men  seize  the 


338  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

opporxunity  of  the  Indians  being  on  the  warpath  or  restless  to 
commit  deviltry,  assured  that  it  will  be  attributed  to  the  redskins. 
There  were  Algonquins  and  Hurons  as  ruthless  as  the  Iroquois, 
and  it  would  be  strange  if  even  all  Frenchmen  shrank  from  com- 
mitting crime  under  the  cloak  of  JVlohawk  atrocities. 

The  year  1654  opened  with  hopes  of  peace.  Onondaga  com- 
missioners came  with  the  avowed  purpose  of  negotiating  with  the 
Governor,  but  with  the  covert  object  of  weaning  the  Hurons  from 
their  allegiance  to  the  French.  The  scattered  bands  of  that  unfor- 
tunate tribe,  which  had  followed  one  another  to  Quebec,  had  been 
settled  on  land  bought  from  iMad'lle  de  Grande  Maison,  on  the 
Island  of  Orleans,  in  ]\Iarch.  1651,  and  to  the  heads  of  families  had 
been  allotted  farms  of  from  twenty  perches  to  one-half  acre  in  size. 
But  the  steady  toil  of  agriculture  has  always  been  irksome  to 
the  Indian.  They  vastly  preferred  hunting,  and  their  French 
neighbors  were  ever  ready  to  engage  in  a  little  illicit  fur 
trade  with  them.  Three  of  Alons.  Giffard's  servants  were  drowned 
one  night  when  returning  from  a  clandestine  negotiation  for 
beaver  skins.  Moreover,  despite  the  surveillance  which  their  civil 
and  spiritual  guides  maintained,  the  mission  kept  up  a  secret 
intercourse  with  one  l)ranch  or  another  of  their  implacable 
Iroquois  kinsmen.  The  delegates  from  the  Confederacy,  who 
were  met  by  Father  le  Mercier,  himself  returning  from  a 
secret  conference  with  his  Christian  converts,  were  Onon- 
dagas,  but  they  bore  presents  from  the  iMohawks.  The 
Christian  converts  kept  the  Father  informed  of  the  progress 
of  these  secret  councils,  and  the  Father  transmitted  the 
news  to  the  Governor,  who  in  February  took  into  his  con- 
fidence a  number  of  the  leading  citizens  at  the  fort.  It  was  decided 
to  charge  the  Hurons  with  their  treachery.  They  were  con- 
founded, and  promised  to  obey  the  instructions  of  the  Governor. 
Here,  unfortunately,  Father  Mercier's  minute  story  comes  to  a 
summary  stop.  Whatever  the  ulterior  designs  of  the  Iroquois 
might  have  been,  they  were  willing  to  conceal  them  under  over- 
tures for  peace.  Promises  of  peace  had  been  made  when  Father 
Poncet  was  exchanged  in  the  previous  year,  and  these  were  now 
reiterated.     They  were  confirmed,  when  Father  Le  Moyne,  taking 


JESUIT  VERSUS   INDIAN  DIPLOMACY.  339 

his  life  in  his  hands,  accompanied  the  Onondagas  back  to  their 
lodges. 

Though  the  Mohawks  were  ostensibly  a  party  to  the  peace, 
the  French  Governor  and  his  ecclesiastical  advisers  had  probably 
a  motive  in  sending  Le  Moyne  to  the  Western  canton  rather  than 
to  the  council  lodge  of  the  Mohawks.  The  Mohawks  occupying 
the  valley  of  the  river  to  which  they  gave  their  name,  and 
separated  from  Fort  Orange  in  the  Dutch  settlement  by  only 
a  low  ridge,  not  only  enjoyed  the  closest  relations  with  their 
commercial  neighbors,  but  were  able  to  levy  a  direct  or  an 
indirect  tax  for  passage  through  their  territory  on  the  more 
Western  tribes.  Hence  there  was  a  spark  of  jealousy 
smouldering  in  the  heart  of  the  Confederacy,  which  Father  Le 
Moyne,  as  priest  delegate,  tried  to  fan  into  a  flame.  The  confusion 
of  motives,  policy  and  action  exhibited  in  the  treaiment  by  the 
civil  powers  of  the  Indians,  whether  friends  or  foes,  can  be  ex- 
plained only  when  one  recollects  that,  while  the  Jesuits  were  the 
counselors  of  several  of  the  Governors  on  matters  in  general,  their 
special  knowledge  of  the  Indian  character  and  speech  gave  their 
advice  on  Indian  affairs  almost  the  authority  of  a  command ;  and 
— a  point  of  much  importance — that  their  opinions  upon  Indian 
policy  were  unavoidably  biased  by  their  religious  hopes  and  fears. 

When  d'Aillcbout  needed  an  ambassador  to  negotiate  with  the 
English,  he  chose  a  Jesuit  priest ;  in  like  manner,  when  a 
clever,  trustworthy  agent  was  needed  to  argue  with  the  Onon- 
dagas  as  to  who  were  their  friends  and  who  were  their  enemies, 
de  Lauzon  accepted  the  services  of  another  Jesuit.  The  members 
of  the  Order  had  studied  the  Indian  language  and  the  customs  of 
the  aborigines,  and  were  by  training  skillful  diplomats  as  well  as 
earnest  ecclesiastics.  The  aptness  of  their  speech  has  always  been 
matched  by  the  profound  discretion  of  their  silence.  Neither 
in  the  Relations,  which  deal  witli  the  religious  work  of  the 
societv,  nor  in  tlie  Joiinial.  which  narrates  the  more  trifling 
events  of  everyday  life,  is  there  even  a  hint  of  the  instruc- 
tions given  to  their  members  when  sent  on  important  politi- 
cal missions,  or  of  tlie  outcome  of  the  negotiations.  It  was  a 
centurv  later  before  Father  Charlevoix,  in  his  historv,  discussed 


340  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

the  political  bearing  of  these  religio-political  commissions.  It 
would  be  interesting  to  know  how  the  interference  of  the  Jesuit 
Order  in  these  delicate  negotiations  was  regarded  by  the  intelli- 
gent laymen  of  the  colony,  and  especially  of  Quebec — the  center 
of  government.  We  know  that  Maisonneuve  and  the  semi-reli- 
gious community  of  Montreal  resented  the  influence  of  the  Jesuits. 
Father  Alercier  mentions  Alaisonneuve's  attempt  to  stop  the 
Onondaga  delegate  in  January,  1654;  and  we  can  hardly  doubt 
that  in  Quebec  also  there  must  have  been  more  or  less  apprehen- 
sion lest  the  religious  enthusiasm  of  the  missionaries  should 
sway  their  political  judgment,  and  so  render  the  priest  a  preju- 
diced adviser  and  a  dangerous  negotiator.  A  symptom  of  such 
jealousy  may  be  seen  in  d'Aillebout's  appointment  of  Alons.  Gode- 
froy  as  joint  ambassador  with  Father  Druillettes  to  the  New  Eng- 
land confederacy.  Nevertheless,  in  Indian  negotiations,  the  Jesuit 
Order  could  claim  a  just  and  valid  right  to  be  consulted.  In  the 
crisis  into  which  the  colony  was  then  drifting  their  policy  was  to 
sow  suspicion  among  the  members  of  the  several  Iroquois  tribes — 
possibly  to  create  a  Western  Iroquois  confederation  which  should 
look  to  France  for  assistance  against  the  powerful  Mohawk  tribe. 
The  Mohawks,  thus  isolated,  would  find  it  more  to  their  ad- 
vantage to  enter  into  a  real  alliance  with  France,  than  to  be  ground 
between  the  conflicting  European  forces  which  were  sure  to  en- 
gage in  a  struggle  for  mastery  over  the  whole  territory. 

In  the  end  the  Indians  proved  to  be  more  wily  politicians  than 
even  the  priests.  Father  Le  Moyne  was  treated  royally  by  the 
Onondagas,  and  returned  to  Quebec  in  the  autumn  of  1654,  full 
of  hopes  of  peace,  and  bearing  good  tidings  of  the  fidelity  of  the 
Huron  Christians,  who,  though  absorbed  into  the  heathen  tribe, 
had  still  clung  to  their  religious  faith  and  practice.  The  enthusias- 
tic accounts  given  in  the  Relations  of  Indian  piety — whether  ex- 
hibited by  Hurons,  Algonquins,  or  even  Iroquois — seem  strange- 
ly unreal,  if  judged  by  the  ultimate  results  and  by  the  attitude  of 
the  Indians  to-day  towards  the  Church  :  still  it  would  be  unfair  to 
the  Jesuits  to  stamp  them  as  inventions,  or  even  always  as  gross 
exaggerations.  The  Indian  is  as  susceptible  of  religious  excite- 
ment as  the  white  man.     History  has  recorded  many  a  paroxysm 


A  SUDDEN   CALM.  34I 

of  devotion  or  fanaticism  which  swept  over  almost  the  whole  of 
Europe.  On  a  smaller  scale,  we  have  all  witnessed  the  powerful 
but  transient  excitement  of  local  Christian  revivals.  Among  the 
Indians  of  our  own  day  the  Messiah  craze  affected  nearly  all  the 
tribes  in  the  Northwest  States  and  Territories  with  an  intensity 
which  so  blinded  them  to  prudence  and  reason  as,  not  only 
to  endanger  the  peace  of  a  large  section  of  the  Rocky  Mountain 
region,  but  to  expose  them  to  the  risk  of  self-annihilation.  The 
sense  of  desperation  has  in  all  times  stimulated,  if  it  has  not  pro- 
duced, religious  enthusiasm  ;  and  the  sad  plight  not  only  of  the 
Hurons  but  of  other  neighboring  tribes,  under  the  dread  of  exter- 
mination, at  one  moment  by  the  Iroquois,  at  another  by  epidemic 
diseases,  must  have  strongly  inclined  them  to  accept  the  consola- 
tions and  hopes  held  out  by  Christianity. 

The  confidence  created  by  the  peace  of  1654  was  dispelled 
by  the  murder  of  Brother  Liegeois  near  Sillery ;  but  there  was  no 
evidence  directly  implicating  the  Iroquois.  Subsequently  a  story 
was  current  in  Quebec — a  most  improbable  one — that  Father 
Le  Moyne,  when  returning  with  his  Onondaga  escort,  had  been 
attacked  by  a  band  of  Mohawks,  but  that  he  had  concealed  the 
fact,  lest  it  should  excite  his  countrymen  to  war.  The  Mohawks 
at  this  time  were  so  far  from  desiring  war  that  they  not  only  sued 
for  peace,  but  prayed  that  a  missionary  should  be  sent  to  them 
also.  Such  a  change  of  heart  and  policy  was  indeed  extraor- 
dinary, and  Mere  Marie  de  ITncarnation  could  only  attribute  it 
to  the  miraculous  protection  of  God,  who  had  so  blinded  their 
enemies  that  they  could  not  appreciate  their  own  strength  or  the 
colony's  feebleness.  Incidentally,  however,  she  attributes  the 
impression  made  on  the  Iroquois  to  the  musical  services  of  the 
church.  "The  Iroquois  ambassadors,  like  other  Indians,  love 
singing.  They  were  enchanted  at  hearing  our  good  people  sing 
in  French,  and  as  a  mark  of  their  appreciation  they  attempted  to 
imitate  the  chant  by  a  song  after  their  own  manner;  but  their 
measures  were  not  harmonious." 

The  Onondaga  peace  delegates  were  in  Quebec  diu-ing  the 
celebration  of  the  jubilee,  on  the  8tb  of  September,  1653,  and  the 
Jesuit  Journal  relates  how  terrified  the  Iroquois  were  by  the  dis- 


342  QUEBEC  IX  THE  SEVENTEEXTII   CENTURY. 

play  of  military  force.  Four  hundred  musketeers  were  in  the 
line  of  march,  and  discharged  their  firearms  at  proper  intervals. 
Suite  cannot  account  for  more  than  400  as  the  total  population  of 
Quebec ;  this  overwhelming  force  must  therefore  have  con- 
sisted of  armed  Indians,  whom  the  Iroquois  had  driven  for 
shelter  to  Quebec.  They  looked  brave  enough  when  masquerad- 
ing under  the  guns  of  P>ance,  but  the  Iroquois  knew  that,  if  they 
w^ere  Algonquins,  they  were  cowards,  and  if  Hurons,  dispirited 
fugitives.  Again  the  undaunted  Father  Le  Aloyne  pleaded  to  be 
allowed  to  run  the  risk  of  martyrdom  on  the  very  spot  where 
Father  Jogues  had  offered  up  his  life,  and  his  request  was 
granted,  but  with  happier  results ;  though  once  a  fanatic  or  a 
lunatic,  running  amuck,  did  threaten  his  life. 

To  the  Onondagas  in  1655  two  missionaries  were  sent  from 
Quebec — Fathers  Chaumont  and  Dablon — accompanied  by  a  large 
deputation  of  that  nation.  Their  reception  was  enthusiastic.  A 
church  was  built  and  converts  were  made,  but  the  message  of  the 
gospel  did  not  quell  the  warlike  spirit  of  the  tribe,  which  engaged 
that  very  year,  with  the  other  members  of  the  Confederacy,  in  de- 
stroying the  Fries  (Les  Chats).  Nevertheless,  Father  Dablon 
felt  so  confident  of  the  amicable  temper  of  the  Onondagas,  and  of 
their  Christian  receptivity,  that  he  returned  to  Quebec  early  in  the 
Spring  of  1656  in  order  to  persuade  De  Lauzon  to  found  a  colony 
in  their  midst.  The  Governor  most  unwisely  acceded  to  his 
request,  in  spite  of  the  warning  of  a  Huron,  who  had  lived  long 
among  the  Onondagas,  and  could  better  interpret  their  motives, 
and  permitted  sixty  men  to  accompany  the  missionaries,  thus 
weakening  his  already  slender  force  by  that  number.  By  a 
miscalculation,  an  attempt  of  the  ]\Iohawks  to  destroy  the 
detachment  while  en  route  failed.  Whether  or  nor  the  plot  was 
prearranged  between  the  ]\Iohawks  and  the  Onondagas  must  re- 
main uncertain,  but  all  pretense  of  friendliness  was  now  thrown 
off  by  the  ]\Iohawks. 

One  morning  before  daylight  a  fleet  of  canoes,  manned  by 
Mohawk  Iroquois,  dropped  down  to  the  Island  of  Orleans.  They 
fell  upon  the  Hurons.  who  were  at  work  in  their  fields,  killed  six 
and  carried  off  eighty  captives.     Defiantly  and  unmolested  they 


RENEWAL  OF  THE  MOHAWK   WAR.  343 

paddled  past  the  fort  in  full  daylight,  obliging  their  captives  to 
sing  a  warsong,  and,  without  pursuit  or  resistance,  reached  their 
village,  where  a  few  of  the  prisoners  were  tortured  and  burnt,  and 
the  rest  adopted  into  the  tribe.  The  celerity  with  which  the  attack 
and  retreat  were  made,  and  tlie  lack  of  preparedness,  due  to  the 
false  security  of  the  Governor  and  his  priestly  advisers,  do  not 
.sufficiently  account  for  the  impunity  with  which  this  stroke  on  the 
part  of  the  Indians  was  allowed  to  pass. 

The  chief  explanation  is  to  be  found  in  the  feeble  force 
at  the  disposal  of  the  Governor.  Nevertheless,  only  a  fort- 
night later,  when  thirty  Ottawas  appeared,  under  the  leader- 
ship of  two  erratic  Frenchmen,  de  Lauzon  allowed  thirty  of  his 
best  men  and  two  Jesuit  Fathers  to  return  with  them.  In  trying 
to  analyze  his  folly  in  thus  depleting  his  resources  in  men,  one  is 
forced  to  attribute  his  action,  in  part  at  least,  to  motives  of  com- 
merce. The  conversion  of  the  savages  may  have  been  dear  to  his 
heart,  but  the  prosperity  of  the  Company  was  dearer  still.  Trade 
had  been  stagnant  during  the  whole  of  his  term  of  office,  and  he 
may  possibly  have  determined  to  signalize  its  close  by  two  bril- 
liant strokes  of  policy.  The  Onondaga  colony,  it  was  hoped,  would 
deflect  the  fur  trade  from  the  Hudson  to  the  St.  Lawrence,  and  the 
Frenchmen  who  occupied  the  Ottawa  and  Lake  Superior  might 
be  the  pioneers — as  in  fact  they  proved  to  be — of  a  succession  of 
traders,  who  should  win  for  France,  first,  the  traffic  in  peltries, 
then  the  dominion  of  that  mysterious  interior  which  had  gradu- 
ally expanded  to  such  vast  proportions.  Both  expeditions  would 
have  been  politic  at  another  time,  l)Ut  just  at  this  crisis  they  were 
almost  criminal.  Every  man  withdrawn  from  Quebec  increased 
the  peril  of  the  whole  country,  as  no  one  should  have  known 
better  than  de  Lauzon  himself;  for  ever  since  he  had  landed  the 
Iroquois  had  menaced  its  very  existence,  and  recently  had  insulted 
him  under  the  guns  of  his  own  Chateau.  They  had  destroyed  or 
scattered,  first  the  Hurons,  then  tlic  Fries  and  Ottawas,  and  now 
they  were  tracking  the  Huron  fugitives  with  the  keen  scent  of 
bloodhounds.  They  recognized  in  them  a  branch  of  their  own 
stock,  and  unless  they  could  succeed  in  absorbing  them,  woidd 
pursue  them  with  a  relentless  vengeance  until  they  were  utterly 


344  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

destroyed.  They  preferred  the  former  alternative,  for  to  win 
back  their  recalcitrant  kinsmen  from  under  the  very  eyes  and 
protection  of  Onontio  himself,  and  his  black-robed  priests, 
would  be  a  greater  triumph  than  to  destroy  them. 

After  taking  two  such  frightful  hazards,  de  Lauzon  sailed  for 
France  in  September,  1656,  leaving  his  son  Charles  as  his  repre- 
sentative. He  was  thus  spared  before  his  departure  the  knowledge 
of  the  tragic  fate  which  had  befallen  Father  Garreau  and  others 
of  the  Ottawa  expedition  at  the  hands  of  a  band  of  Mohawks, 
who  had  been  lying  in  ambush  for  them  at  the  entrance  to  the 
Ottawa  River. 


CHAPTER    XVII. 

A  Dreary  Chapter  in  the  History  of   the   Colony  and 

City. 

Whatever  s°i7iblance  of  friendship  for  the  French  there  may 
have  been  on  the  part  of  the  Onondagas  and  the  western  members 
of  the  Confederacy,  the  Mohawks  made  no  attempt  to  disguise 
their  hostihty  or  their  contempt,  but  continued  to  conduct  negotia- 
tions with  the  miserable  remnant  of  the  Hurons.  Thus  it 
came  about  that,  in  the  autumn  of  this  same  year,  when  eighty 
of  the  latter  had  been  forcibly  carried  away  captive,  a  deputa- 
tion of  Mohawks  appeared  in  Quebec  to  claim  the  fulfilment  of  the 
promise  made  by  the  rest,  that  they  would  peaceably  accompany 
them  and  accept  affiliation  into  their  tribe.  There  was  no  conceal- 
ment on  the  part  of  the  Mohawks,  and  no  denial  on  the  part  of  the 
Hurons.  The  delegates  in  fact  demanded  a  public  audience  to 
state  their  case,  and  the  Governor  granted  it.  There  had  been 
many  a  pow-wow  with  the  Indians  in  Quebec,  but  never  a  council 
in  which  the  Indian  was  the  aggressor  and  the  government  on 
the  defensive. 

The  orator  of  the  Mohawk  deputation  first  claimed  of  the 
Hurons  the  fulfilment  of  their  j^romise  to  return  with  them.  Then 
he  appealed  to  the  Governor  not  to  interfere,  hardly  concealing  a 
threat  of  what  would  happen  should  he  do  so.  The  council  ad- 
journed that  the  Hurons  might  deliberate.  On  its  reassembling, 
Father  Le  Moyne,  who  had  made  more  than  one  trip  to  and  fro 
between  the  Mohawk  Valley  and  Quebec,  spoke.  He  tried  to  re- 
lieve the  Governor's  embarrassment  by  declaring  that  the  Hurons 
were  of  age  and  free  to  choose  their  own  course;  adding  that  he 
himself  would  follow  them,  should  they  decide  to  desert  their 
homes,  lest  they  might  also  desert  their  faith.  The  only  branch 
of  the  Hurons  which  decided  to  return  with  the  deputation  was 
the  familv  of  the  Bears. 


34^  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

The  Mohawks  had  hardly  left  with  their  contingent  of  the 
Hurons,  when,  as  if  hy  concert,  a  deputation  of  the  Onondagas 
appeared  to  claim  fulfilment  of  a  like  pledge.  They  pretended 
indignation  when  they  heard  that  the  Bears  had  left  to  join  the 
Mohawks.  The  Governor  pacified  them  with  smooth  words,  and, 
as  the  Hurons  had  repented  of  their  promise,  explained  that  the 
women  and  children  were  afraid  to  accompany  an  armed  force ; 
but  that  the  following  year  all  would  join  a  deputation  of  Onon- 
dagas  in  Montreal,  should  one  be  sent  to  meet  them  there  in  a 
friendly  spirit.  With  such  subterfuges  they  were  fain  to  be  con- 
tent, but  in  their  unmoved  and  stolid  countenances  an  experienced 
eye  might  have  read  the  bitter  disappointment  that  was  rankling 
in  their  hearts. 

No  outbreak  occurred,  however,  until  the  following  summer. 
According  to  Charlevoix,  the  Onondagas  appeared  in  Montreal  at 
the  time  appointed,  to  accompany  their  Huron  guests ;  but  though 
they  had  professed  unbounded  admiration  for  the  French, 
comparing  them  most  advantageously,  morally  and  socially,  with 
the  Dutch,  whom  they  had  met  at  Fort  Orange,  when  the  moment 
of  departure  arrived,  they  positively  refused  to  allow  any  French- 
men or  any  priest  to  join  the  company.  At  last  they  relented  so 
far  as  to  permit  a  few  French  laymen  to  enter  their  canoes,  but 
denied  a  place  to  the  priests.  These,  rather  than  be  parted  from 
their  converts,  found  an  old  canoe,  and.  with  no  other  provisions 
than  a  sack  of  flour,  follow'cd  the  cortege. 

Dissension  occurred  on  the  way.  Some  of  the  Hurons  were 
killed,  and  those  that  arrived  had  anything  but  a  cheerful  tale  to 
tell  to  the  sixty  colonists  whom  de  Lauzon  had  so  foolishly  allow- 
ed to  accompany  Father  Le  !Moyne.  These  had  already  begun  to 
doubt  the  sincerity  of  their  hosts,  and  to  entertain  apprehensions 
for  their  own  safety ;  for  news  had  reached  the  Iroquois  country 
that  a  band  of  Oneidas  had  killed  and  scalped  three  French- 
men hunting  near  Montreal,  and  that,  in  reprisal,  d'Aillebout, 
who  had  been  appointed  by  Charles  de  Lauzon  as  interim  Gov- 
ernor, in  the  same  manner  in  which  Charles  had  been  nominated 
by  his  father,  had  ordered  the  arrest  of  every  Iroquois,  ir- 
respective of  tribe,  within  the  confines  of  Canada.     Father  Le 


IROQUOIS    AND    IIURONS.  347 

Moyne  had  been  entreated  by  the  Mohawks  to  retnrn  at  once  and 
use  his  influence  for  the  hberation  of  those  of  their  tribe  who,  they 
claimed,  were  being-  punished  for  no  fault  of  their  own.  He  delayed 
his  departure  till  the  Spring  of  1658,  when,  in  fulfilment  of  their 
promise  of  a  safe  conduct,  the  savages  delivered  him  unharmed 
in  Montreal,  though  war  had  actually  commenced.  As  to  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Onondaga  colony,  it  had  become  evident  to  them  some 
time  before  that  the  peace  was  about  to  he  broken,  and  that  imless 
they  could  escape  by  some  ruse,  their  slaughter  was  inevitable. 
How  Dupuis  managed  to  extricate  his  little  band  of  Frenchmen 
from  the  perilous  position  is  only  one  of  the  thousand  and  one 
thrilling  episodes  of  this  romantic  period  of  Canadian  history. 

Thus  ended  in  flight  the  Onondaga  colony,  the  only  piece  of 
original  statecraft  of  de  Lauzon's  administration.  He,  the  Jesuits, 
his  successor,  Charles  de  Lauzon,  and  d'Aillebout,  had  all  been 
outwitted  by  the  Irocjuois.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  there  was 
really  any  actual  jealousy  between  the  Mohawks  and  the  Western 
Iroquois ;  it  is  more  probable  that  the  French  had  been  lulled  into 
security  by  fictitious  dissensions,  while  the  peace  had  been  used 
to  draw  away  the  Hurons  from  allegiance  to  their  white  allies, 
to  whom,  notwithstanding  their  feebleness,  they  were  of  inestim- 
able value  as  scouts.  If  they  could  be  tempted  to  desert, 
not  only  would  the  French  be  deprived  of  their  aid,  but  the 
fighting  material  of  the  Five  Nations  would  be  recruited  by  men 
of  the  same  origin  as  themselves.  Both  Mohawks  and  Onondagas 
were,  therefore,  anxious  to  win,  rather  than  destroy,  the  rem- 
nant of  the  Hurons.  All  disguise  was  thrown  aside  before  Dupuis 
reached  the  St.  Lawrence  from  Onondaga  with  his  band  of  fugi- 
tive colonists.  Even  before  the  return  of  Father  Le  Moyne  the 
war  had  l)roken  out  with  such  violence  that  the  inhabitants  of 
Montreal  dared  not  venture  beyond  their  defences;  while,  as  far 
east  as  Quebec,  white  men  and  red  were  falling  victims  to  the  mur- 
derous enemy.  There  was  no  one  to  stay  their  hand.  The  elder  de 
Lauzon  had  carried  back  liis  hallucinations  to  old  France.  His 
feeble  son,  and  substitute  as  Governor,  anxious  for  the  release 
from  responsibility  the  priesthood  would  give  him,  had,  after  a 
year's  experience,  shifted  the  care  of  the  colony  on  to  the  shoulders 


348  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

of  d'Aillebout,  whose  previous  administration  had  been  far  too 
lacking  in  force  and  decision  to  strike  terror  into  the  hearts  of  the 
Iroquois.  In  his  second  administration  he  at  least  showed  more 
resolution  than  his  predecessor  in  venturing  to  seize  all  the  Iro- 
quois he  could  lay  his  hands  on,  as  soon  as  it  was  found  that  the 
Mohawks  had  renewed  hostilities. 

Even  had  the  younger  de  Lauzon  and  d'Aillebout  been  men  of 
strong  character,  they  held  office,  not  by  appointment  from 
France,  but  merely  as  interim  nominees  of  their  respective  pre- 
decessors. Moreover,  the  French  government,  as  usual,  left  them 
defenceless,  while  they  lacked  the  prestige  which  a  Royal  patent 
would  have  conferred. 

At  last  there  came  from  France  a  real  nobleman  as  Governor 
— the  Vicomte  d'Argenson,  a  man  in  whom  the  military  instinct 
was  so  strong  that  he  had  abandoned  for  the  profession  of  arms  the 
advantages  which  the  Church  offered  to  a  man  of  family,  and  had 
distinguished  himself  in  the  battles  of  Sens  and  Bordeaux  during 
the  Fronde  troubles.  He  was  greeted,  on  the  very  day  of  his  ar- 
rival, July  II,  1658,  by  the  war-whoop  of  the  Iroquois  and  the 
shrieks  of  helpless  Algonquin  women,  who  were  being  murdered 
under  the  shadow  of  Cape  Diamond.  He  organized  a  pursuing 
party,  but  did  not  himself  lead  it.  He  had  the  ceremonies  and 
courtesies  of  the  court  to  attend  to,  and  an  engagement  to  keep 
with  the  Jesuit  Fathers,  who  had  invited  him  to  dinner,  after 
which  there  was  to  be  a  garden  party,  where  he  and  the  people  of 
Quebec  were  to  be  entertained  by  a  little  play.  The  pursuing 
party  which  he  had  sent  out  failed  to  overtake  the  victors  or  their 
captives,  but  a  check  to  the  elation  of  the  savages  was  administer- 
ed by  La  Potherie,  the  brave  and  prudent  Governor  of  Three 
Rivers,  when  he  seized  eight  warriors,  who  had  approached  the 
fort  on  the  pretence  of  a  peace  parley,  but  whom  he  suspected, 
not  withoud  reason,  of  other  designs.  One  he  held  as  hostage,  the 
others  he  shipped  to  Quebec  to  be  dealt  with  as  the  new  Governor 
might  deem  fit.  This  incident  somewhat  damped  the  ardor  of  the 
Iroquois,  and  a  brief  respite  from  war  followed  on  the  action 
taken  by  d'Argenson.  who  decided  to  allow  two  of  his  prisoners 
to  return  to  the  ^vlohawks  and  tell  their  fellow  tribesmen  that  the 


NEGOTIATIONS    WITH    THE   ENEMY.  349 

five  were  held  as  a  pledge  for  their  good  behavior.  This  capture  by 
La  Potherie  was  followed  speedily  by  another  signal  success  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Three  Rivers,  the  first  news  of  which  was  the 
arrival  of  five  more  Iroquois  prisoners  at  Quebec  on  the  25th  of 
September;  then  two  more  Iroquois,  who  had  taken  refuge  in 
Couture's  house  through  the  wrecking  of  their  canoe,  fell  into  the 
hands  of  the  French. 

These  disasters  did  not,  however,  entirely  quench  the  courage 
of  the  doughty  warriors.  Two  of  them  had  the  hardihood  to  land 
at  Cap  Rouge,  and  threaten  a  certain  Nopce  with  death  unless 
he  gave  them  news  of  their  imprisoned  brethren.  They  then  looted 
the  store  of  Mons.  Gauthier,  and  joined  the  rest  of  the  band  on 
the  south  shore.  Mere  de  ITncarnation  tells  of  a  terrible  thunder- 
storm in  October,  which  the  Iroquois  took  advantage  of  to  frighten 
the  serving  man  of  the  convent,  burn  their  barn,  and  carry  off  the 
oxen.  Their  audacity,  we  are  told,  stirred  the  Governor  to  make 
a  reconnoissance,  accompanied  by  twenty-five  Frenchmen  and  two 
priests ;  but  nothing  was  seen  of  the  enemy,  and  possibly  the  story 
was  largely  the  creation  of  nervous  fright. 

The  winter  was  approaching,  and  the  Iroquois  were  paddling 
up  stream  and  making  their  presence  known  at  various  places.  At 
Three  Rivers  they  captured,  on  the  6th  of  November,  foisr 
Frenchmen  who  were  cutting  hay  on  the  flats  of  the  south  shore. 
Immediately  afterwards,  on  Lac  St.  Pierre,  they  secured  four 
more  prisoners.  They  allowed  one  to  return  with  a  message  to 
the  Governor  that  the  seven  others  would  be  well  cared  for, 
and  exchanged  in  the  following  spring  for  their  own  men  if  a 
treaty  of  peace  were  made.  On  further  thought  they  decided  not 
to  leave  their  kinsmen  in  durance  vile  so  long,  if  the  matter  could 
be  otherwise  arranged,  and  consequently  a  deputation  of  them  ap- 
peared on  the  20th  under  the  guidance  of  Father  Le  Moyne,  and 
accompanied  by  a  Dutchman  from  the  Hudson,  whose  presence 
they  seemed  to  regard  as  equivalent  to  a  safe  conduct.  There  was  a 
great  council  held,  resulting  in  an  exchange  of  prisoners.  All  the 
Iroquois  prisoners  but  four  were  liberated — these  four  being  held 
as  hostages  for  the  safety  of  the  Jesuit  Fathers  in  the  Iroquois 
country.     The  captive  Frenchmen  were  restored  to  their  friends. 


350  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

The  usual  invitation  was  made  to  Iroquois  girls  to  come  and 
marry  French  lads,  and  thus  cement  the  peace. 

Had  the  French  authorities  shown  as  much  vigor  as  the  Iro- 
quois, the  positions  might  have  been  reversed,  for  the  river  was 
not  free  of  ice  when,  on  April  3rd,  three  Oneidas  appeared  to  treat 
for  the  liberation  of  their  countrymen.  The  first  council  was  held 
on  the  5th  of  April,  but,  as  the  Governor  was  firm  in  main- 
taining that  the  Algonquins  and  Hurons  must  be  parties  to 
any  treaty  made,  and  as  the  month  had  nearly  ended  be- 
fore Noel,  the  principal  Algonquin  chief,  returned  from  his 
winter  hunt,  the  final  council  was  not  held  imtil  the  28th. 
Thus  it  was  the  30tii  before  the  ambassadors,  the  liberated  prison- 
ers, and  Father  Le  Moyne  paddled  away,  accompanied  as  far  as 
Three  Rivers  by  the  Superior  of  the  Jesuits,  by  Father  Druillettes 
and  by  a  host  of  Algonquins,  who  went  thus  far  to  give  their  final 
instructions  and  a  hearty  godspeed  to  the  Algonquin  ambassadors, 
who  were  accompanying  b'ather  Le  Moyne  and  the  Oneidas  to  the 
Iroquois  country. 

The  town  of  Quebec,  it  will  lie  seen,  had  not  been  allowed  to 
stagnate  for  lack  of  excitement.  The  coming  and  going  of  the 
dusky  envoys  were  known  to  all,  and  the  hopes  and  fears  to  which 
every  council  gave  rise  were  shared  by  all ;  for  the  Indian  war  was 
waged  at  their  very  door,  and  the  number  of  slain,  though  small, 
constituted  a  larger  proportion  of  the  scanty  population  than  the 
casualties  of  a  war  usually  reach,  when  calculated  on  the  popula- 
tion of  a  great  nation. 

Distressing  as  the  situation  of  the  colony  had  heretofore  been, 
it  was  growing  steadily  worse.  Day  after  day  came  news  of  Iro- 
quois hovering  about  the  settlement,  and  of  overt  acts  of  hostility, 
at  the  very  time  when  the  Mohawks,  with  Father  Le  Moyne, 
were  actually  en  route  to  treat  for  the  surrender  of  the  four  pris- 
oners still  in  the  Frenchmen's  hands.  The  mission  arrived  on  the 
3rd  of  July,  and  four  tedious  discussions  were  held  before  it  was 
decided  to  deliver  up  two  of  the  prisoners,  and  retain  two  as  hos- 
tages for  the  safe  release  of  two  Frenchmen  in  the  hands  of  the 
Onondagas.  These  negotiations  were  doubtless  followed  with 
keen  interest  by  those  whose  relatives  were  in  captivity ;  but,  to 


THE    HUKONS   TAKE   SHELTER   AT   QUEBEC.  35I 

the  rest  of  the  population,  there  was  something  very  hollow  in 
protestations  and  promises  which  experience  hatl  shown  were 
liable  to  be  broken  without  notice,  at  the  first  suggestion  of  caprice 
or  the  first  imagination  of  a  grievance. 

Events  of  greater  interest  to  the  Quebeckers  were  the  arrival 
of  Bishop  Laval  on  the  i6th  of  June,  1659;  the  dispute  which 
was  raging  between  Father  Queylus,  head  of  the  Sulpicians  of 
Montreal,  and  the  Jesuits,  which  the  Bishop  lost  no  time 
in  taking  up ;  the  organization  of  the  Quebec  Church  following 
the  Bishop's  arrival :  the  descent  of  some  sixty  canoes  with  peltries 
from  the  upper  Lakes,  giving  promise  of  a  revival  of  trade, 
which  of  late  years  had  been  very  dull ;  and  the  starting  of  Mons. 
Denis'  flour  mill,  situated  on  the  hill  above  the  Ursuline  Convent. 
The  houses  being  of  wood,  fires  at  this  period  were  not  infretiuent. 
Sometimes  one  would  occur,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Lu-suline 
Convent,  which  assumed  the  dimensions  of  a  public  calamity ; 
while  smaller  conflagrations  would  l^-ing  heavy  loss  to  private 
individuals.  Good  Mathieu  Chourel  and  his  wife  were  at  mass 
at  Beauport  when  their  house  was  burnt  down.  Martin  Prevot's 
house  sufi^ercd  the  same  fate,  and  in  February,  1661,  the  house 
of  Boutentrein,  in  the  Lower  Town,  was  burnt  to  the  ground 
with  all  its  contents.  The  Bishop  tried  to  stop  the  fire  with 
the  Host,  as  has  been  done  in  our  day,  and  some  thought  that  the 
fury  of  the  flames  was  momentarily  checked ;  nevertheless  the 
building  with  all  that  it  contained  was  totally  consumed. 

The  new  Ursuline  Convent,  enlarged  though  it  was,  could 
hardly  accommodate  the  influx  of  pupils  when  the  Lidians  were 
forced  by  the  Iroquois  into  the  town.  Even  before  the  raid  made 
by  the  Iroquois  on  the  Huron  settlement  on  the  Island  of  Orleans, 
preparations  were  under  way  to  transfer  the  remnant  of  that  na- 
tion to  Quebec.  When  the  removal  took  place  they  pitched  their 
wigwams  on  the  open  space  before  the  fort,  and  there  subse- 
quently a  stockade  was  erected  for  their  protection.  Those 
who  had  not  followed  the  chief  of  the  Bear  family  to  the 
Iroquois  country  took  refuge  in  the  city,  and,  to  quote  Mere  de 
ITncarnation's  own  words — "Their  girls,  to  the  number  of  seventy 
or  eighty,  went  every  day  as  pupils  to  the  convent.    After  worship 


352  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

and  instruction  a  portion  of  sagamitc  was  served  to  eacli  girl  on 
her  own  plate  of  birch  bark.  Then,  after  returning  thanks,  each 
went  to  her  cabin,  there  to  share  her  meal  with  her  family." 

No  fervor  of  charity,  however,  could  render  an  Indian  encamp- 
ment in  the  heart  of  the  town  long  endurable.  Huron  Chris- 
tians, notwithstanding  their  acknowledged  virtues,  were  still  In- 
dians, and  their  old  habits  were  not  wholly  eradicated  by 
■their  conversion.  Nevertheless,  as  it  would  have  been  barbar- 
ous to  drive  them  beyond  the  pale  of  protection,  their  pres- 
ence was  tolerated  until  the  peace  of  De  Tracy  in  1667,  when  they 
were  removed  a  mile  and  a  half  from  the  city  to  the  mission  of 
Notre  Dame  de  la  Foye.  Even  there  the  mutual  injury  to  morals, 
which  results  from  too  close  proximity  between  white  men  and 
Indians,  must  have  been  severely  felt,  for  the  remnant  of  the  once 
great  nation  was  transplanted  in  1693  to  Ancienne  Lorette.  Long 
subsequently  they  built  the  pretty  village  which  they  still  occupy 
beside  the  falls  of  the  St.  Charles,  and  which  they  lovingly  named 
Jeune  Lorette.  Here,  on  the  very  outskirts  of  the  great  forest 
which  stretches  northward  without  break  to  the  Arctic  regions, 
they  can  cultivate  their  farms  and  yet  obey  their  racial  hunting 
instincts.  Happily  there  has  never  been  between  the  Indian  and 
the  Frenchman  that  repugnance  which  prevents  lawful  wedlock, 
and  therefore  the  blending  of  the  two  in  the  Lorette  Indian  of  to- 
day has  produced  a  type  which  combines  some  of  the  admirable 
qualities  of  both  nations.  The  work  of  the  Jesuit  Fathers  still 
bears  its  fruit,  and  w^hoever  knows  the  Lorette  Indian  and  has 
hunted  with  him,  can  excuse  the  vein  of  exaggeration  in  which  the 
Jesuit  Fathers  record  the  many  virtues  of  their  converts. 

The  first  ship  of  the  season  of  1659  had  brought  out  the  Bishop, 
and  from  the  last,  the  "Saint  Andre,"  which  arrived  on  September 
6th,  there  landed  three  nuns  and  two  priests  for  Montreal.  Their 
ministrations  had  been  needed  on  the  voyage,  for  there  were  on 
board  one  hundred  and  thirty  immigrants  intended  for  Montreal, 
not  Quebec,  and  typhoid  fever  of  so  virulent  a  type  had  broken  out 
among  them  that  ten  had  died.  The  Jesuit  annalist  is  not  sure 
whether  the  number  is  nine  or  ten.  The  matter  was  a  purely  mun- 
dane one,  and  he  was  more  anxious  to  record  an  incident  of  reallv 


PEST-STRICKEN    IMMIGRANTS.  353 

serious,  that  is  to  say  of  ecclesiastical,  moment.  The  Bishop 
and  the  Viceroy  were  already  quarreling  as  to  the  selection 
of  their  seat  or  throne  in  the  Church.  Fortunately  there 
was  a  mediator  at  hand  in  the  person  of  ex-Governor  d'Aille- 
bout,  who  decided  that  the  Bishop  should  sit  within  the  altar  rail, 
the  Governor  in  the  very  middle  of  the  aisle,  but  outside  the  balus- 
trade. After  narrating  how  the  momentous  issue  had  been  settled, 
Father  Lalemant  goes  on  to  tell  of  the  landing  of  four  patients 
from  the  ship  and  the  spread  of  the  disease  among  the  people. 
But  perhaps,  after  all,  the  victory  of  the  Bishop  over  the  Gover- 
nor in  this  trifling  incident  was  of  more  importance  in  its  bearing 
on  the  future  of  the  colony  than  the  death  of  a  few  poor  folk  from 
fever.  The  lives  of  these  were  in  any  case  to  be  of  short  dura- 
tion, but  the  political  power  of  the  Church,  for  which  Laval,  from 
first  to  last,  fought  valiantly  and  consistently,  was  a  force  that  was 
never  to  die,  but  which  was  destined  to  shape  the  character  both 
of  the  people  and  of  the  Government  for  all  time  to  come. 

It  was  a  very  sad  autumn  for  the  little  town.  The  Iroquois 
were  everywhere,  and  had  carried  off  a  man  named  Routier  from 
Cap  Rouge,  while  the  contagious  fever  was  picking  ofif  its 
victims,  among  whom  was  good  Father  de  Quen,  who  had,  like 
many  a  devoted  priest,  fallen  a  voluntary  martyr  to  duty  when 
ministering  to  the  dying.  Not  many  were  added  to  the  popula- 
tion by  the  one  hundred  and  thirty  immigrants  who  had  sailed 
from  France  in  the  "Saint  Andre,"  for  of  these  some,  as  we  have 
seen,  died  on  shipboard,  others  landed  only  to  occupy  a  narrow 
bed  in  the  little  cemetery  at  the  top  of  Mountain  Hill,  or  the 
Hotel  Dieu  graveyard,  while  not  a  few  of  the  old  inhabitants 
succumbed  to  the  deadly  disease. 

The  spring  of  1660  brought  no  relief,  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, intensified  the  prevailing  anxiety.  An  Iroquois  pris- 
oner was  brought  in  by  a  band  of  Tadousac  Indians. 
He  was  too  seriously  wounded  to  survive  a  journey  to  Tadousac, 
whither  his  captors  would  have  taken  him.  in  order  that  the 
whole  tribe  might  revel  in  the  sight  of  his  death  agony;  so 
they  burnt  him  in  Quebec;  but  he  had  first  the  satisfaction 
of    terrifving    the    whole    town    with    a    story    of    the    marshal- 


^-^54  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

ling  of  a  great  array  of  800  of  liis  tribesmen.  Mere  Marie  de  I'ln- 
carnation  tells  the  story  graphically  in  one  of  her  letters.  "After 
disposing  of  the  prisoner,  that  is,  burning  him,  it  was  determined 
to  inspect  the  nunnery  and  to  decide  whether  it  was  fit  to  with- 
stand a  siege.  The  Governor,  accompanied  by  experts,  visited  the 
building  several  times,  and  posted  sentries  at  each  end  of  our 
house.  At  regular  intervals  they  changed  guards.  Redoubts  were 
thrown  out,  the  strongest  being  near  our  stable.  It  defended  the 
barn  on  one  side  and  the  church  on  the  other.  All  our  windows 
were  walled  up  and  perforated  with  loopholes.  Openings  were 
made  from  room  to  room,  and  a  bridge  thrown  betvv'een  our  dwell- 
ing and  that  of  our  servants.  The  sole  means  of  exit  left  from  our 
court  was  by  a  little  door,  through  which  we  could  pass  only  one 
by  one.  In  a  word,  our  convent  was  lurnetl  into  a  fortress,  gar- 
risoned by  twenty-four  brave  men.  When  we  were  ordered  out, 
the  guard  had  already  been  placed.  I  begged  leave  to  remain,  fear- 
ing to  leave  our  convent  to  the  mercy  of  a  lot  of  soldiers.  Besides, 
I  had  to  furnish  them  with  food  for  both  their  mouths  and  their 
muskets.  Three  of  the  sisters  stayed  witli  me,  l)ut  I  confess  I  was 
deeply  troubled  when  I  found  that  they  had  removed  the  Holy 
Sacrament,  and  that  we  were  left  without  it.  Sister  Ursule,  one 
of  the  Sisters,  wept  bitterly,  and  refused  all  consolation.  I  had  to 
submit,  however,  to  the  deprivation — the  greatest  which  could  be 
imposed.  Our  conmiunitv  and  that  of  the  Hospifalihrs  were  ac- 
commodated in  the  building  of  the  Jesuit  Fathers,  whose  Superior 
assigned  us  apartments  quite  separate  from  the  main  lodging 
house.  We  had  quarters  in  the  Logis  de  la  Congregation.  To 
the  HospitaUcres  was  assigned  another  liuilding  near  by,  name- 
ly, the  carpenter  shop.  The  Jesuit  property  is  surrounded  by  a 
strong  wall,  and  therefore  we  are  secure.  The  Christian  Indians 
were  allowed  to  build  their  cabins  in  the  yard.  As  soon  as  the  peo- 
ple saw  us  quit  our  convent,  which  was  a  building  comparatively 
safe  and  strong — much  more  so  tlian  the  Hospital,  which  from  its 
situation  is  more  exposed  to  tlie  Iroquois  attack — they  were  ter- 
rified, looking  upon  our  removal  as  an  admission  that  all  was  lost. 
In  a  panic  they  left  their  lioiises  and  fied — some  to  the  fort,  others 
to  the  Jesuit  college,  the  Bishop's  palace,  and  some  even  to  our 


^    > 

z.     C 


=    > 


.^-^^'^t 


. »,?-«*TT3    sv 


i-  5.  '<     i  i-  %.  I IIT 


n\  \ 


QUEBEC  ON  GUARD.  355 

convent,  where  were  harbored  six  or  seven  families,  some  in  our 
servants'  rooms,  others  in  one  of  onr  parlors,  and  in  the  public 
offices.  The  rest  barricaded  themselves  as  best  they  could  in  the 
lower  town,  where  guards  were  posted  for  their  further  protec- 
tion. On  the  morrow,  which  was  the  Thursday  of  Pentecost,  the 
Reverend  Superior  conducted  our  sisters  and  their  charge  back  to 
the  convent.  We  should  have  chosen  a  Mother  Superior  on  that 
very  day  had  these  troubles  not  compelled  us  to  postpone  the 
election ;  and  this  same  routine  continued  for  eight  days,  the  nuns 
leaving  the  convent  every  evening  and  returning  on  the  following 
morning  at  six  o'clock.  But  we  were  bereft  of  our  Holy  Sacra- 
ment until  the  day  of  the  Fete  Dieu.  On  the  8th  day  of  the 
month  the  army  of  the  Iroquois  was  reported  as  being  near.  In 
fact  it  had  been  seen.  In  less  than  half  an  hour  everyone  was  at 
his  post,  and  all  our  doors  again  barricaded,  and  I  served  out  to 
each  of  the  soldiers  all  he  needed.  Just  then  one  of  our"  people, 
who  had  been  fishing,  assured  us  that  he  liad  actually  seen  a  canoe 
with  eight  men  erect  in  it,  coming  from  the  Iroquois  haunt  at  the 
Chaudiere  Falls.  This  news  confirmed  the  private  rumors,  but 
happily  both  proved  false." 

There  was,  in  point  of  fact,  an  expedition  consisting  of  some 
one  hundred  Iroquois  on  its  way  to  ravage  the  St.  Lawrence  coun- 
try, but  it  was  checked  and  diverted  from  its  purpose  by  the  heroic 
act  and  self-sacrifice  of  Dollard  and  his  little  band  of  immortals, 
who  devoted  themselves  to  death  in  order  to  save  the  colony. 

The  advantage  was  not  always  on  one  side,  and  Quebeckers 
could  witness,  if  they  would,  many  an  act  of  cruel  vengeance 
on  their  foes.  On  May  the  3rd  eight  Iroquois  in  a  canoe,  who 
were  carrying  off  Madame  Picart,  whom  they  had  captured  with 
her  four  children  at  St.  Anne,  and  wounded  to  death,  were  sur- 
prised in  the  attempt  to  land  at  Point  Levis.  Three  were  drown- 
ed ;  the  remaining  five  were  taken  prisoners ;  of  these,  three  were 
burnt  in  Quebec,  one  was  saved  for  the  amusement  of  Three 
Rivers,  and  the  hfe  of  one  was  spared.  The  Jesuit  Fathers  ex- 
erted themselves  to  stay  these  barbarities,  but  to  have  actually  for- 
bidden them  would  have  dangerously  weakened  their  induence 
over  their  Indian  converts.     When  possible  they   ransomed   the 


350  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

prisoners.  This  they  succeeded  in  doing  in  the  case  of  an  Iroquois 
girl  of  twelve,  whom  they  hought  with  strings  of  beads,  and  thus 
saved  from  death ;  for  in  the  warfare  of  the  tribes  neither  sex  nor 
age  afiforded  protection. 

In  June  the  news  of  ex-Governor  d'Aillebout's  death  reached 
Quebec.  He  died  in  Montreal,  where  his  remains  still  lie.  As 
Alaisonneuve's  lieutenant  he  was  always  more  closely  related  to  the 
struggling  religious  community  of  Montreal  than  to  the  trading 
post  of  Quebec ;  and  in  Montreal,  therefore,  his  ashes  rightly  re- 
pose. All  the  French  governors  of  Canada  who  died  in  office — and 
there  were  many — were  buried  in  Quebec.  Champlain's  remains 
occupy  an  unknown  grave.  Chevalier  de  ]\Iezy  died  in  office,  and 
was  buried  in  the  cemetery  of  the  Hotel  Dieti  in  Quebec,  where  not 
even  a  headstone  marks  the  spot.  Frontenac  (1698),  his  successor 
De  Callieres,  (1703),  and  de  Callieres'  successor,  Philip  de  Ri- 
gault  (1725),  the  Alarquis  de  Vaudreuil,  all  died  when  Mceroys, 
and  were  buried  in  the  Church  of  the  Recollets  in  Quebec.  Jacques 
Pierre  de  Taffanel,  oMarquis  de  la  Jonquiere,  laid  down  the  cares 
of  office  in  February,  1752,  to  die  in  May  of  the  same  year.  He 
too  was  buried  in  the  Church  of  the  Recollets.  The  bodies  of 
these  five  viceroys  were  transferred,  on  the  destruction  of  the 
Recollet  Church,  to  the  Cathedral,  where  a  tablet  only  has  been 
erected  to  their  memory,  though  several  of  them  certainly  merit 
more  distinguished  commemoration. 

The  Spring  ships  arrived  with  news  of  the  new  treaty  of  com- 
merce made  by  ]\I.  de  Becancour ;  but  of  what  avail  were  more 
favorable  conditions,  when  trade  was  almost  at  a  standstill ;  when 
the  Lake  Indian  could  only  approach  the  St.  Lawrence  with  his 
beaver  skins  at  the  risk  of  his  life ;  and  when  every  house  w-as 
an  improvised  fortress?  The  colony  had  been  saved  for  that  sum- 
mer from  further  raids  by  the  heroism  of  Dollard,  though  small 
bands  of  Iroquois  still  prowled  about,  capturing  French  and 
Indians.  The  comparative  security  prevailing  permitted  the  West- 
ern Indians  to  descend.  Le  Groseillier,  of  Lake  Superior,  brought 
dow^n  sixty  canoes  full  of  skins,  worth  200,000  livres,  of  which 
Montreal  traders  bought  one-fourth ;  the  balance  was  sold  in 
Three  Rivers.     The  party  took  back  two  Jesuits  and  seven  lay- 


DESPERATE   STATE  OF  THE   COLONY.  357 

men,  but  at  Montreal  they  insisted  on  landing  Father  Alhanel. 
As  a  comment  on  the  false  colonial  policy  which  had  been 
pursued,  the  same  ship  which  brought  out  the  new  commercial 
treaty  was  hurried  back  to  France  for  a  load  of  fiour.  The  colony 
had  now  been  over  half  a  century  in  existence,  and  was  not  even 
yet  self-supporting  in  the  matter  of  food  supplies.  This 
scarcity,  according  to  tl'Argenson,  was  due  to  the  disturbed 
condition  of  the  country,  and  to  a  dread  that  the  Iroquois 
would  prevent  the  garnering  of  the  harvest,  if  sowed.  According 
to  the  census  then  taken,  the  population  of  the  country  around 
Quebec  numbered  nearly  thrice  that  of  the  town  itself;  in  normal 
times,  therefore,  this  farming  population  should  have  produced  a 
large  surplus  of  cereals  over  what  was  needed  for  the  consumption 
of  a  town  of  547  souls.*  What  crops  there  were  the  poor  farmers 
were  permitted  to  gather  in  peace  this  autumn,  for  d'Argenson  had 
arrested  four  Iroquois,  who  had  come  to  him  under  pretence  of 
being  ambassadors,  and  the  Montrcalcrs  had  arrested  eleven  more 
of  the  same  band,  who  were  awaiting  there  the  news  of  their  dele- 
gates' mission.  Fearing  that  extreme  measures  might  be  taken 
against  the  prisoners,  the  Iroquois  refrained  from  further  atroci- 
ties. But  the  lull  was  short,  for  in  1661  the  Iroquois  first  appeared 
at  Tadousac,  where  they  dealt  so  decisive  a  blow  that  that  outpost 
was  abandoned.  The  same  band  then  ascended  the  river,  and  on  the 
i8th  of  June  struck  terror  into  the  whole  district  of  Quebec  by 
eight  murders  on  the  north  shore  and  seven  on  the  Island 
of  Orleans.  On  the  22nd,  de  Lauzon's  son,  the  seneschal,  with  his 
men,  were  waylaid  when  hastening  to  warn  his  brother-in-law, 
I'Espine,  who  was  shooting,  of  his  danger,  and  all  were  killed. 
L'Espine  found  the  bodies  and  brought  news  of  the  disaster  to 
Quebec  on  the  24th.  The  Iroquois  were  too  prudent  to  attack  the 
town  itself,  but,  as  they  ascended  the  river,  victim  after  victim 
sank  under  their  stroke,  or,  worse  still,  fell  into  their  hands  alive. 
At  last  from  twenty-five  to  thirty  Christian  captives  were  thus  at 
their  mercy. 

*This  census  gives  to  Beaupre 5'!3  Riviere  St.  Charles..  .      112 

Beauport 185  Quebec 547 

Cote  St.  Jean.    153  

Sillery 145  1,675 


35^  QUEBEC  IN   THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

When  the  state  of  the  colony  seemed  hopeless,  there  appeared 
a  deputation  of  Onondagas  and  Cayugas,  pleading  for  peace,  with 
an  exchange  of  prisoners  and  for  the  return  of  the  black  robe. 
The  Governor  called  an  assembly  of  the  citizens  of  Quebec.  The 
sincerity  of  the  redskins  might  well  be  douJJted,  but  they  were 
willing  to  release  four  Frenchmen,  whom  they  had  brought  with 
them,  and  to  restore  ten  more,  if  the  eight  Iroquois  captives  were 
liberated.  There  could  be  but  one  response.  There  were  not  as 
many  men  capable  of  bearing  arms  in  the  colony  as  there  were 
Iroquois  warriors,  so  that  an  offensive  policy  was  impos- 
sible. The  eight  Iroquois  were  released,  and  the  four  Frenchmen 
restored  to  their  homes.  Then  that  undaunted  hero.  Father  Le 
Moyne,  exposed  himself  to  a  martyr's  fate  by  going  for  the  fifth 
time  on  a  self-imposed  mission  to  the  Iroquois.  As  a  result,  the 
nine  Frenchmen  in  the  hands  of  the  Onondagas  were  released  at 
once,  and  a  promise  given  that  the  others  would  be  sent  back  in  the 
following  spring.  Those  who  survived  reached  Montreal  in  Au- 
gust, 1662.  Encouraging  though  they  seemed,  these  exchanges  of 
courtesy  and  of  prisoners  did  not  stay  the  war.  The  released 
Frenchmen  and  their  escorts  met  on  the  w'ay  a  prisoner  in  the 
hands  of  a  Jjand  of  savages,  who  were  exulting  over  the  murder  of 
Mons.  de  Maistre,  one  of  the  priests  of  St.  Sulpice  ;  two  months 
afterwards  another  priest  of  tliat  order,  Mons.  Vignal,  fell  a  vic- 
tim to  Mohawk  ferocity.  The  lower  .St.  Lawrence  was  troubled 
with  apprehension  only,  being  exempt  from  actual  attack  dur- 
ing the  autumn  of  1661,  and  also  the  summer  of  1662,  when  the 
Iroquois  were  harrowing  the  Algonquin  tribes  to  the  north  and 
south  of  the  upper  river. 

The  arrival  of  the  ships  in  1661  was  late.  It  was  the 
third  of  August  before  a  boat  from  Perce,  having  on  board  the 
Abbe  Queylus  and  others,  [wrought  news  that  a  new  Governor  to 
succeed  d'Argenson,  Mons.  d'Avaugour,  was  close  at  hand.  It 
was  a  poor  consolation  to  welcome  merely  a  governor  and  his 
secretary,  when  what  all  were  praying  for  was  an  army  to  drive 
l)ack  the  Iroquois,  and  carry  the  war  into  the  enemy's  territory. 
D'Argenson  had  done  as  well  perhaps  as  could  be  expected.  He 
had  more  than  once  exposed  liis  own  person  to  risk  of  capture;  and 


D  AVAUGOUR  SUCCEEDS  D  ARGENSON  AS  GOVERNOR.      359 

his  plaint  to  the  home  g-overnment  as  to  his  lielplessness,  with  an 
empty  treasury  and  empty  barracks,  while  hostile  barbarians  were 
scouring  the  country,  is  very  pitiful.  Tliough  not  a  great  captain 
or  a  profound  politician,  lie  was  a  man  of  sufficient  observation 
and  common  sense  to  form  an  accurate  opinion  as  to  what  the 
colony  needed  in  its  governor.  Writing  to  his  brother,  the  year 
before  his  recall,  on  the  subject  of  his  successor,  he  urges  him  to 
use  his  influence  and  "to  do  his  best  to  induce  the  Company  to 
choose  a  person  who  should  possess,  besides  real  piety,  great  de- 
cision of  character  and  vigorous  health.  Another  qualification, 
which  is  absolutely  necessary,"  he  says,  "is  that  he  be  a  man  of 
such  rank  that  no  one  can  despise  him  by  reason  of  his  birth,  and 
so  rich  that  no  one  can  accuse  him  of  coming  out  to  Canada  to 
make  his  fortune.  A  mere  suspicion  of  selfish  motives  would 
counteract  all  the  good  he  might  attempt  to  do."  He  himself, 
during  his  administration,  did  really  more  fighting  with  the  Bishop 
than  with  the  Iroquois,  and  the  record  of  his  administration  is  one 
of  dire  distress,  humiliating  disasters  inflicted  by  a  savage  foe,  and 
petty  domestic  skirmishes,  which  he  had  neither  tact  to  avoid  nor 
the  skill  to  win. 


CHAPTER    XVIII. 

Governor    d^Avaugour's    Administration — The   Earth- 
quake of    1663. 

The  new  Governor  did  not  enter  on  the  performance  of  his 
functions  till  d'Argenson  sailed  in  September,  occupying  the  in- 
terval with  travel  and  study  of  the  country  and  its  conditions,  and 
of  the  elements  that  would  aid  or  oppose  him  in  his  official 
capacity.  The  situation  on  the  whole  was  not  encouraging.  A 
triangular  fight  was  in  progress  between  the  Governor,  Father 
Queylus,  and  the  Bishop ;  and  it  was  clear  that  the  Bishop  was 
getting  the  best  of  it  with  both  his  opponents.  It  became  a 
serious  question  how  long  the  Bishop  and  he  would  remain  on 
good  terms.  The  quarrel  over  the  brandy  question  had  broken 
out,  and  the  Bishop's  views  were  so  extreme  that  in  October  he 
had  three  men  shot  for  selling  it  to  the  aborigines.  In  the  eyes 
of  the  new  Governor  such  rigor  was  excessive.  As  to  the  country 
itself,  it  impressed  him  most  favorably,  and  he  gave  glowing  ac- 
counts of  it  in  his  despatches.  Had  he  examined  conditions,  how- 
ever, with  a  more  practical  and  statesmanlike  eye,  he  would  not 
have  postponed  an  appeal  for  help  until  writing  his  second  de- 
spatch ;  for  a  month's  experience  should  have  been  more  than 
sufficient  to  satisfy  him  that  the  colony  was  in  dire  straits,  and 
that,  unless  the  Crown  of  France  assumed  the  cost  and  respon- 
sibility of  defending  it,  there  was  nothing  to  look  forward  to  save 
annihilation.  Nor  would  it  have  required  a  very  large  army  to 
subdue  the  Five  Nations  just  then.  They  had  been  weakened  by 
continual  warfare,  in  which,  though  successful,  their  numbers  had 
been  gradually  reduced,  and  they  had  not  yet  recruited  ^  their 


D  AVAUGOUR'S  DREAM   OF  CONQUEST.  361 

losses  by  absorption.     The  Relation  of  1660  computes  their  fight- 
ing strength  as  follows  : 

Mohawks 500 

Oneiclas 100 

Onondagas  300 

Cayugas 300 

Senecas    i  ,000 

Making  a  total  of 2,200 

Grenlaugh  estimates  their  forces,  in  1677,  as — 

Mohawks 300 

Oneidas    200 

Onondagas 350 

Cayugas 300 

Senecas    1,000 

Total 2, 1 50 

The  Senecas  had  taken  only  a  subordinate  part  in  the  wars 
with  the  French  and  their  allies,  and  had  consequently  suffered  the 
least.  The  Tuscaroras  were  not  incorporated  as  a  sixth  nation 
until  1712.  The  number  of  Indians  inhabiting  the  continent  at  the 
time  of  the  advent  of  the  whites  is  unquestionably  exaggerated  in 
popular  estimation.  So  far  as  any  data  exist,  the  members  of  the 
Huron  and  Algonquin  tribes  adjacent  to  the  St.  Lawrence,  who 
were  allies  to  the  French,  were  even  less  numerous  than  those  of 
the  Five  Nations,  while,  as  war  material,  they  were  of  course 
vastly  inferior. 

D'Avaugour,  however,  was  neither  a  careful  observer  nor 
a  sensible  adviser,  to  judge  by  his  last  despatch,  published 
in  the  Collection  of  Manuscripts,  Vol.  I,  page  155.  It  is 
such  an  incredibly  senseless  document,  and  so  expressive  of  the 
unfitness  of  the  men  chosen  by  the  Company,  and  confirmed  by 
the  Crown,  as  Governors  of  New  France,  that  it  is  worth  copving 
in  full : 

"Monseigneur — My  first  despatch  describes  the  length  and 
breadth  of  the  great  river  St.  Lawrence :  My  second  was  upon  the 


362  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

necessity  of  fortifying  the  city  of  Quebec :  In  the  third  I  present 
the  unwisdom  of  ceding  the  colony  of  Plaisance  in  Newfoundland 
and  Gaspe,  and  now,  Monsieur,  I  venture  to  propose  to  you  a 
project  for  the  conquest  of  the  two  towns  inhabited  by  the  Eng- 
lish and  Dutch,  thus  making  the  King  master  of  the  continent  and 
its  people.  These  people,  who  are  all  heretics  of  the  Reformed 
Religion,  so-called,  live  under  a  kind  of  liberty,  and  have  Gover- 
nors over  them  only  at  intervals.  They  are  very  rich,  through 
enjoying  the  fishing  and  trafficking  with  the  Indians. 

"If  His  Majesty  would  only  capture  these  towns,  he  would  be 
ruler  of  the  finest  portions  of  America,  for  the  winters  are  not  as 
cold  as  in  Canada.  Only  four  large  war  vessels,  with  4,000  men, 
are  required.  My  hope  is  that  His  Majesty  will  put  me  in  com- 
mand. If  he  does,  I  will  reduce  the  towns  of  Boston  and  Manhat- 
tan between  the  months  of  May  and  July,  and  return  by  Albany, 
leaving  garrisons  in  all  the  towns  to  hold  the  people  in  sub- 
jection." 

This  bold  project,  to  conquer  with  4,000  men  the  40,000  report- 
^r'  some  years  before  by  Druillettes  as  composing  the  fighting 
population  of  New  England,  not  to  mention  the  Dutch  of  the 
Hudson,  was  signed  on  September  2nd,  1663,  just  a  fortnight 
before — as  the  result  of  his  misunderstanding  with  the  Bishop — 
the  Governor  was  replaced  by  de  Mezy.  Whether  the  valiant 
Governor's  despatch  had  much  influence  at  Versailles  may  be 
doubted,  for  facts,  only  too  well  known  in  France,  spoke  for 
themselves.  The  Relations  of  the  Jesuits  had  for  years  past 
described  the  forlorn  condition  of  the  French  inhabitants, 
scattered  in  little  villages  along  the  banks  of  the  river  for  over 
200  miles,  and  of  the  larger  but  still  insignificant  groups, 
organized  as  towns,  with  a  population  of  less  than  3,000 
souls ;  never  sowing  a  crop  with  any  certainty  of  being  allowed  to 
garner  it,  or  so  much  as  issuing  from  their  homes  with  any  sense 
of  security  for  their  lives.  Had  they  all  been  men,  they  might 
have  left  their  homesteads  and  attacked  the  Iroquois,  but  they 
dare  not  desert  their  women  and  children.  Year  after  year,  more- 
over, the  Superior  of  the  Jesuits  had  sent  one  priest  and  another 
to  plead  in  France  for  their  flocks.     Father  Le  Jeune  had  gone 


AN  APPEAL  TO  THE   KING.  363 

himself  on  this  mission  in  the  antumn  of  1660.  And  now,  in 
1661,  the  people  despatched  a  delegation  to  urge  their  cause. 
They  and  the  new  Governor  selected  a  good  ad\'Ocate  in  the  per- 
son of  Mons.  Boucher,  commandant  of  Three  Rivers.  He  had 
lived  thirty  years  in  the  colony,  and  his  visit  to  France 
was  opportunely  timed.  Mazarin,  who  had  been  too  busy 
in  maintaining  his  own  dubious  position  to  give  much 
care  to  the  condition  of  the  colony,  had  passed  away  more  than  a 
year  previousl}^  and  the  young  King,  Louis  XIV.,  was  beginning 
to  practice  the  theory  of  kingcraft  which  his  father's  great 
minister  had  inculcated — to  be  a  king  in  deed  as  well  as  in 
name.  He  therefore  heard  with  interest,  and  questioned  with 
intelligence,  the  sturdy  colonist,  who,  if  not  versed  in  court 
etiquette,  possessed,  after  the  manner  of  frontiersmen,  the 
higher  qualities  of  the  true  gentleman — stern  honesty  and  modest 
courage.  The  monarch  in  response  promised  to  send  a  regiment 
of  soldiers  to  drive  back  the  Iroquois,  and  a  contingent  of  settlers 
to  recruit  the  depleted  population;  better  still,  he  decided  to  cancel 
the  charter  of  the  commercial  company,  and  to  take  over  the  gov- 
ernment himself.  The  time  was  ripe  for  a  successful  forward 
movement,  if  France  had  been  alive  to  the  value  of  her  colony, 
and  willing  to  brace  herself  for  the  effort  necessary  to  secure  its 
present  safety  and  its  future  development.  Cromwell's  vigorous 
colonial  policy  had  been  closed  by  his  premature  death — a  policy 
which  had  cost  Spain  some  of  her  most  cherished  West  Indian 
Islands,  and  France  the  Colony  of  Acadia.  Louis  XIV.  might  re- 
peat the  Protector's  colonial  achievements,  for  Cromwell's  succes- 
sor in  England  was  not  a  man  to  oppose  him  vigorously.  More- 
over, Charles  II.  was  parting  with  the  only  minister,  Shaftesbury, 
who  would  have  been  a  match  for  Louis'  adviser  in  all  marine 
and  colonial  matters,  Colbert,  had  a  struggle  arisen  at  that  time. 
In  order  to  obtain  independent  information,  Louis  XIV.  sent  a 
special  commissioner  to  Canada,  the  Sieur  Dumont,  and,  as  a 
pledge  of  his  interest,  despatched  with  him  two  shiploads 
of  immigrants,  who  arrived  October  27th.  Dumont,  judging 
Montreal  to  be  the  most  needy  and  also  the  most  important 
outpost  of  the  colony,  carried  his  colonists  thither.  The  population 


y 


364  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

of  Montreal  must  indeed  have  been  reduced  to  a  low  point, 
for,  even  with  this  large  addition  and  subsequent  increments, 
the  inhabitants  In  1666  numbered  only  625.  Of  seventeen 
deaths  in  Montreal  in  1661,  fourteen  were  at  the  hands  of  the  Iro- 
quois. The  population  of  Montreal  was  in  fact  being  rapidly  ex- 
terminated when  the  contingent  under  Dumont  arrived  to  recruit 
its  numbers  and  its  courage.  Apart  from  its  claims  as  a  religious 
outpost  of  the  Church,  it  was,  from  both  a  military  and  a 
mercantile  point  of  view,  of  cardinal  importance.  Montmagny 
and  subsequent  Governors,  with  their  feeble  forces,  judged  it 
unwise  to  attempt  to  defend  the  upper  river;  but,  had  their 
military  resources  been  sufficient,  they  would  doubtless  have  made 
of  ^Montreal  a  barrier  for  the  defence  of  the  population  and  trade 
of  the  lower  river  by  establishing  there  a  fortress  of  sufficient 
strength  with  an  adequate  garrison.  As  it  was,  Montreal  pro- 
tected Three  Rivers  and  Quebec  simply  by  satiating  the  appetites 
of  the  Iroquois,  who  so  harassed  the  unfortunate  inhabitants  as  to 
reduce  them  to  famine  and  despair  during  the  years  1662  and 
1663.  The  people  of  Quebec  did  not  suffer  till  the  latter 
year  from  actual  attack,  but  the  town  was  in  an  agony  of  suspense 
and  anxiety,  as  news  of  one  disaster  after  another  was  brought  by 
white  messengers  from  Montreal,  not  to  speak  of  reports,  true 
and  false,  brought  by  the  Indians,  of  marauding  bands  setting  out 
from  the  Iroquois  country.  There  was  dreadful  apprehension  for 
the  safety  of  Father  Le  Moyne  and  the  French  captives  among  the 
Onondagas,  and  these  fears  were  heightened  by  the  appearance  of 
seven  canoes  of  Iroquois  braves  on  the  loth  of  September,  who 
paddled  past  the  city  and  killed  two  Frenchmen  on  the  Island  of 
Orleans.  Nevertheless,  though  war  was  in  progress,  the  hostiles 
were  true  to  their  promise,  and  on  the  15th  of  September  Father 
Le  Moyne  appeared  with  the  released  captives,  to  the  infinite  joy 
of  the  inhabitants. 

It  was  an  exciting  summer,  for  the  Iroquois  band  after  killing 
two  Frenchmen  fell  on  a  Huron  family  on  the  Island  of  Orleans, 
after  which  they  hurried  down  the  river,  and  murdered  more 
Frenchmen  near  Tadousac.  Returning,  they  flaunted  their  con- 
tempt for  the  French  by  firing  on  some  Huron  canoes  immediately 


A    MONASTERY    SCANDAL.  365 

in  front  of  the  town.  As  if  these  troubles  were  not  enough,  there 
was  dissension  among  the  French  themselves.  Following  close 
in  the  wake  of  Father  Le  Moyne's  canoe  came  Mons.  Le  Ber's 
boat  from  Montreal  with  Mons.  de  Maisonneuve  on  board,  bound 
for  France  to  make  another  appeal  for  help.  Immediately  on 
landing,  Mons.  Le  Ber  was  arrested  as  an  accomplice  in  some 
real  or  suspected  conspiracy,  and  his  goods  were  confiscated. 
What  the  act  was  with  which  he  was  charged,  or  against  whom 
the  conspiracy  was  aimed,  the  records  do  not  give  the  faintest 
hint.  The  fact  is  simply  stated  in  the  Jour?ial  des  Jcsuites,  which 
further  mentions  that,  as  a  consequence,  Mons.  de  Maisonneuve 
changed  his  plans  and  returned  to  Montreal.  The  Governors 
were,  in  fact.  Governors  of  Quebec,  rather  than  Governors  of 
the  Colony,  and  had  always  shown  jealousy  of  the  growing  im- 
portance of  the  struggling  town  at  the  mouth  of  the  Ottawa.  De 
Lauzon  had,  during  his  tenure  of  office,  cancelled  ]\Iaisonneuve's 
right  to  his  warehouse  in  Quebec,  and  possibly  this  interference 
with  the  plans  and  movements  of  the  Montreal  Governor  may 
have  been  simply  another  instance  of  the  exercise  of  arbitrary 
power  instigated  by  jealousy. 

The  Bishop  had  excommunicated  all  who  were  engaged  in 
the  traffic,  and  had  sailed  for  France  to  lay  before  the  King  a 
formal  complaint  against  the  Governor,  and  defend  his  own  posi- 
tion. During  his  absence  the  Jesuits  did  their  best  to 
continue  his  policy.  But  while  the  good  Fathers  were  willing  to 
use  all  the  powers  of  the  Church  and  of  the  State  to  check  the 
demoralization  of  their  converts  through  the  use  of  ardent  spirits, 
they  were  by  no  means  total  abstainers  themselves,  or  advocates 
of  it.  Just  then,  indeed,  a  little  occurrence  within  their  own 
doors  showed  what  accidents  may  happen  in  the  best  regulated 
communities.  It  was  their  custom  to  give  their  choristers 
beer,  and  at  Christmas  time  they  supplemented  it  with  a 
flask  of  wine.  That  might  not  have  done  nnich  harm,  but  the 
chief  warden,  without  their  knowledge,  duplicated  the  dose,  which 
proved  too  much  for  the  youngsters.  That  such  a  catastrophe, 
which  it  was  impossible  to  conceal,  should  have  happened  at  a 
m.oment  when  thev  were  thundering  excommunications  against  all 


366  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

persons,  high  or  low,  guilty  of  selhng  drink  to  the  savages,  was, 
to  say  the  least,  embarrassing,  and  must  have  exposed  the  rev- 
erend gentlemen  to  not  a  little  irreverent  chafif. 

Unfortunately  other  crimes  as  well  were  rife.  La  Badande's  house 
was  rifled  by  thieves,  and  then  burnt  to  conceal  the  robbery ;  but 
the  criminal,  one  Larose,  was  speedily  apprehended  and  hanged. 
Other  thieves  were  caught  after  this,  but  so  lax  had  become  the 
standard  of  civil  authority,  or  so  antagonistic  the  attitude  of  the 
civil  officials  towards  the  reverend  conservators  of  public  morals, 
that  no  convictions  could  be  secured.  The  Fathers  were  in  despair, 
when  the  whole  country  was  suddenly  frightened  into  a  sense  of 
its  wickedness  by  the  most  violent  earthquake  on  record  in  Can- 
ada. The  focus  of  greatest  disturbance  was  then,  as  subse- 
quently, at  or  near  Bale  St.  Paul,  where  a  little  hill  is  described 
as  toppling  into  the  river,  and  then,  through  the  elevation  of 
the  land,  reappearing  as  an  island.  Quebec,  near  the  center  of 
the  movement,  felt  the  shocks  acutely.  Father  Lalemant  de- 
scribes the  movement  as  less  violent  in  elevated  localities  than 
in  low-lying  ones;  it  is  probable,  therefore,  that  the  shores  of 
the  St.  Lawrence  and  the  lower  town  were  more  violently  shaken 
than  the  upper  town. 

There  had  been  premonitions  for  months  previously  of  an  im- 
pending convulsion,  aerial  voices,  fiery  serpents  flying  through  the 
air,  magnificent  double  sims.  and  a  solar  eclipse  with  other  natural 
and  some  most  abnormal  phenomena — all  interpreted  afterwards 
as  supernatural  warnings.  All  passed  unheeded,  however,  until 
half-past  five  on  Shrove  Monday,  1663,  when  the  people  were  pre- 
paring for  the  feasting  and  revelry  of  Shrove  Tuesday.  Suddenly 
there  was  a  noise  as  of  a  furious  conflagration,  followed  by  a  rock- 
ing motion,  which  overturned  household  articles,  cracked  walls 
from  cellar  to  roof,  threw  down  chimneys,  crushed  the  ice  on  the 
river,  shivering  it  into  splinters,  and  terrified  the  whole  population 
into  such  an  access  of  piety  that  "Shrove  Tuesday  was  happily 
converted  into  Good  Friday,"  to  use  the  Jesuit  description,  and  the 
rush  to  the  confessionals  kept  the  priests  busy  the  whole  night.  But 
the  reformation  was  shortlived,  as  Father  Lalemant  is  willing  to 
confess  in  his  letter  to  the  General  of  the  Order,  which  was  not  in- 


A    MEMORABLE    EARTHQUAKE.  367 

tended  for  publication.  "The  whole  region,"  he  says,  "was  shaken 
at  one  and  the  same  time  by  a  violent  earthquake  on  the  5th  day  of 
February.  It  was  not  continuous,  but  intermittent — now  more, 
now  less  violent.  There  was  a  wonderful  commotion  of  men's 
minds  at  the  start,  producing  conversions,  both  among  the  French 
and  the  natives ;  but  these  were  so  transitory  that  an  increase, 
rather  than  a  decrease,  of  the  scourge  was  deserved  by  many. 
However,  no  notable  loss  was  felt,  if  you  except  the  loss  of  some 
chimneys,  which  immimity  is  rightly  attributed  to  the  special  favor 
of  God.  These  things  seem  proper  to  be  written  to  you  fraternally 
in  this  my  private  letter.  I  send  another — a  puldic  one — with 
matters  more  fully  considered  as  regards  our  plans  about  combat- 
ing future  wants." — Thwaites'  Jesuit  Relations  47.  page  255. 

In  fact,  despite  the  consternation  with  which  the  phenomena 
were  viewed,  and  the  exaggeration  with  which  they  were 
described,  this  earthquake  was  probably  not  much  more  violent 
than  many  that  have  occurred  since,  but  which,  from  familiarity, 
create  little  or  no  terror.  There  had  been  slight  shocks  in  1661, 
but  this  was  the  first  occasion  wdien  the  new  settlers  experienced 
the  horrible  sensation  of  cosmic  instal)ility  which  results  from  the 
discovery  that  the  solid  earth  is  really  elastic,  and  that  the  ever- 
lasting hills  themselves  may  shake  and  tremble.  Physical  fear  was 
intensified  by  superstitious  terror  and  belief  in  the  interference  of 
supernatural  and  malevolent  agencies.  Mere  Marie  de  ITncarna- 
tion  expressed  the  current  opinion  when  she  tells  us  that  "the 
devils  undoubtedly  mix  themselves  up  with  natural  occurrences." 
As  always  happens,  the  further  removed  the  phenomena  were 
from  the  actual  observation  of  the  narrators,  the  more  extra- 
ordinary they  were  described  as  being.  At  Three  Rivers,  when 
the  rocks  were  cracking  and  actually  disappearing,  a  liorrid, 
shapeless  and  monstrous  specter  was  seen  crossing  from  east  to 
west  along  the  edge  of  the  moat  constructed  for  the  military  de- 
fence of  the  town.  At  Montreal  the  terror  was  less,  because,  as 
the  Church  declared,  the  consciences  of  the  pious  jxx)ple  there 
were  not  disturbed  on  account  of  their  sins — more  probably  be- 
cause, owing  to  the  greater  distance  from  the  center  of  dis- 
turbance,  the   shocks    were   less   violent.     The    duratiou    of   the 


368  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

disturbances  was  prolonged  into  August,  by  which  time  the 
compunction  for  sins  had  grown  fainter  than  even  the  expiring 
throes  of  the  troubled  earth. 

Towards  the  end  of  May  the  community  was  startled  by  news 
of  the  burning  of  the  Sieur  de  Beaulieu's  house  on  the  Island,  and 
the  discovery  of  the  remains  of  the  master  and  his  valet  in  the 
ruins.  It  was  not  long  before  the  supposed  accident  was  suspected 
to  be  a  crime,  and  circumstances  pointed  to  another  servant  of  the 
deceased  as  the  probable  culprit.  He  was  arrested,  and  the  criminal, 
after  being  tortured  on  the  public  scaffold,  was  shot.  The  public 
hangman  was  not  idle,  for  next  month  a  fugitive  from  justice  from 
Tadousac  was  arrested,  and  hanged  on  the  following  day.  A  few 
brighter  incidents,  however,  are  recorded.  An  English  bark 
brought  in  seven  Frenchmen,  rescued  from  the  Iroquois.  It  was 
probably  a  ship  sailing  from  New  Amsterdam  which  was  glad  to 
carry  this  living  cargo  as  an  excuse  for  trading  within  pro- 
hibited limits  on  the  St.  Lawrence.  Then  there  returned 
from  the  Ottawa  country  all  but  two  of  the  little  band  so 
recklessly  allowed  to  go  thither  three  years  before,  when  the 
colony  was  in  the  direst  straits  for  men.  The  150  Indians  who 
accompanied  them  brought  down  in  thirty-eight  canoes  a  good 
stock  of  beaver  skins — a  most  welcome  consignment  when  nearly 
all  the  avenues  of  trade  were  blocked  by  the  Iroquois. 
W^hether  the  Fathers  of  the  Society  of  Jesus  had  a  lien  on 
these  skins  is  not  expressly  stated,  but  Father  Lalemant  assures 
us  that  the  Society's  outlay  on  the  expedition  exceeded  the  value  of 
the  skins  by  800  livres.  It  was,  in  truth,  not  without  heavy  outlay 
that  the  Jesuit  mission  was  maintained,  and  therefore  not  without 
good  reason  that  the  Franciscan  Recollets,  with  their  stringent 
vows  of  poverty,  had  been  forced  to  resign  this  missionary  field  to 
the  more  opulent  order.  The  Jesuits  were  fulfilling  their  duty  as 
hosts  to  the  Indians  in  the  most  generous  manner.  In  the  previous 
winter,  in  addition  to  the  destitute  Hurons  who  had  sought  the 
protection  of  the  fort,  there  had  congregated  in  and  about  Quebec 
between  300  and  400  Algonquins  from  Sillery,  Nova  Scotia,  and 
Tadousac,  fleeing  from  forest,  lake  and  river — haunted  by  the 
specter  of  the  dreaded  Iroquois.     The  Indian  population  of  the 


QUEBEC    AND    MONTREAL.  369 

town  was  therefore  well  nigh  as  numerous  as  the  white,  for  before 
winter  set  in  the  shifting,  seafaring  class  had  vanished. 

The  support  of  this  concourse  of  helpless  savagery  devolved 
necessarily  on  the  Society.  There  was  no  money  in  the  public  treas- 
ury for  their  relief.  The  Company  was  bankrupt,  even  if  its  agents 
had  been  willing  to  help  ;  and  the  people  were  poor.  The  Society 
of  Jesus  was  therefore  alone  in  a  position  to  protect  the  fugitives 
from  starvation. 

What  wonder  that  the  Algonquin  tribes  yielded  so  gener- 
ally to  the  sweet  influences  of  charity,  and  adopted  a  form  of 
Christianity,  which  not  only  gratified  their  senses  with  its  pic- 
turesque and  significant  ritual,  but  gave  them  wherewithal  to  be 
fed  and  clothed  ?  Though  the  town  was  exempt  from  some 
of  the  disastrous  results  which  to-day  attend  the  close  contact  of 
the  aboriginal  races  with  immigrant  Anglo-Saxons,  nevertheless 
the  existence  of  a  certain  amount  of  immorality  and  even  crime, 
arising  from  such  intercourse,  had  to  be  admitted.  The  adherents 
of  the  Bishop  attributed  the  vice  entirely  to  the  baneful  influence 
of  brandy ;  but  it  was  in  part,  without  doulit,  due  to  the  laxity  of 
Indian  habits  and  the  easy  morals  of  a  large  section  of  the  un- 
married French,  who  were  already  acquiring  too  great  a  fondness 
for  Indian  ways  in  other  matters  than  mere  forest  roving. 

The  contrast  between  the  exemplary  piety  of  the  Montreal  col- 
onists and  the  greater  license  of  the  port  of  Quebec  was  not  wholly 
due  to  the  strict  rule  of  ]\laisonncuve  and  the  stern  religious  and 
municipal  influence  of  the  Sulpicians  at  A'ille-Marie.  The  two 
towns  were  very  diflr'erently  situated,  and  to  maintain  order  in 
Quebec  must  have  taxed  the  energies  of  the  Bishop  and  his  secular 
clergy  with  all  the  aid  the  Jesuits  could  render.  During  the  busy 
season  of  navigation  the  influx  of  reckless  sailors  had  a  most  de- 
moralizing effect,  and  during  the  idle  time  there  was  great  tempta- 
tion for  the  men  to  amuse  themselves  with  the  Indians  in  a  way 
which  the  Church  could  not  commend.  These  unfavorable  condi- 
tions did  not  exist  in  the  sister  town  to  anything  like  the  same 
extent ;  and  there  was  little  therefore  to  counteract  the  influence 
of  a  pious  clergy^  and  of  civil  leaders  who  were  themselves  reli- 
gious devotees. 


370  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

Meanwhile  great  changes  were  taking  place.  Canada  had 
ceased  to  be  governed  by  a  trading  company,  and  had  become  a 
Crown  Colony.* 

*  The  Indian  population  of  the  Eastern  Provinces  has  probably  not  very  much 
decreased  between  the  17th  century  and  to-day.  The  census  of  the  existing 
Indian  population  of  the  Province  of  Quebec,  as  given  in  Roy's  Bulletin,  March, 
1901,  is  as  follows  : 

Bt'cancour Abenaki    Reservation 49 

St.  Pierre  du  Lac Abenaki   Reservation 374 

Mani  waki Algonquin 396 

Teniiscamingue Algonquin 190 

Viger-Temiscouata  .         .Amalicites ill 

Hurons  at  Lorette Quarante  Arpents  and  Portncuf 449 

Charlesbourg Amalicites , 34 

County  of  Quebec Abenakis 19 

Saint  Urbain Abenakis 23 

Caughnavvagha Iroquois 1.995 

St.  Regis Iroquois IjSS? 

Oka Iroquois 1,130 

Maria  (Bale  des  Chaleurs)  Micmacs 86 

Restigouche Micmacs  (under   Capouchins) 541 

Escoumains Montagnais 35 

Bersimis Montagnais 451 

There  are,  therefore,  of  Algonquin  origin  in  the  Province  of  Quebec,  1,300; 
of  Iroquois  converts  of  the  Jesuits,  drawn  from  the  Five  Nations,  4,462;  and  of 
Hurons,  449. 


CHAPTER    XIX. 

The   Dissolution   of   the    Company  of    One    Hundred 

Associates  and  the  Assumption  of  the 

Government  by  France. 

The  Company  of  the  One  Hnnch-ed  Associates,  after  a  feeble 
existence  of  thirty  years,  died  in  the  year  1663.  Organized  by 
Richeheii,  it  was  hailed  at  the  time  of  its  creation  as  a  practical 
refutation  of  the  contention  that  commercial  activity  was  only  to 
be  found  in  association  with  the  theology  of  the  Reformation  and 
advanced  political  views.  The  history  of  the  Company  certainly 
established  the  negative  fact  that  being  a  good  Catholic  did  not 
necessarily  make  a  Frenchman  a  good  business  man.  It  also 
brought  out  the  irreconcil-able  antagonism  between  the  service  of 
God  and  the  service  of  Mammon,  as  illustrated  by  the  exploiting 
of  a  territory  for  purposes  of  gain  by  men  working  under  a  charter 
which  bound  them  to  make  the  conversion  of  the  natives  to 
Christianity  their  chief  concern.  The  commercial  company  failed 
to  make  money,  and  failed  to  govern  the  country  successfully. 
Its  headquarters  were  in  Paris.  The  scene  of  its  operations  was 
three  thousand  miles  away.  Half  a  year  must  elapse  before  in- 
structions followed  the  report  of  events.  The  constitution  of  the 
Company  required  that  the  head  of  the  corporation  should  reside 
in  France,  and  yet  a  free  hand  had  of  necessity  to  be  given  to, 
or  at  any  rate  assumed  bv.  the  local  authorities,  more  especially  as 
the  people  were  debarred  from  all  active  ]:)articipation  in  their 
own  government.  Every  opportunity  was  thus  aiTorded  to  the 
local  commercial  agents  of  the  Company,  as  well  as  to  the  Govern- 
ment officials,  for  furthering  their  private  ends  at  the  expense  of 
the  corporation  and  the  country  which  employed  them.  Even  had 
the  Companv  not  been  virtuallv  bankrupt  when  it  was  laimched 
on  its  career,  its  ultimate  failure  was  almost  inevitable.  Till  its 
charter  was  modified  in  1645  and  to  a  less  extent  subsequently,  it 


372  QUEBEC  IX  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

was  burdened  with  tlie  care  and  expense  of  a  system  of  colonial 
government  not  of  its  own  devising.  It  was  taxed  to  support  a 
church  whose  ministers  actively  opposed — both  in  France  and  in 
the  colony  itself — its  commercial  policy.  As  a  monopoly  it  was 
hated  by  the  whole  population,  which  thought  it  no  sin 
to  engage  in  illicit  trade.  The  articles  which  it  could  export 
were  few  in  number,  and  the  furs  which  composed  its  most 
valuable  resource  were  poached  upon  by  foreign  vessels  in 
the  gulf,  and  by  the  Dutch  and  English  landward.  It  was  carry- 
ing on  its  operations  in  northern  seas,  and  upon  a  river  where  the 
risks  of  navigation  are  to  this  day  considered  extra  hazardous — 
and  all  this  during  troublous  times,  when  war  was  almost  con- 
tinuous, and  when  peace,  if  dependence  were  placed  on  it,  might 
prove  more  dangerous  to  commerce  than  war  itself. 

The  one  hundred  charter  members  had  been  reduced  by  death 
and  debts  to  thirty-six,  the  resources  of  those  who  remained 
were  greatly  impaired,  and  things  generally  had  been  brought  to 
so  desperate  a  pass,  that  in  1660  the  Company  sent  Peronne  du 
Alesnil  to  investigate  its  affairs.  He  brought  suit  against  all  the 
local  ofificials,  but  Alons.  Gaudais,  the  Commissioner  sent  out  in 
1663  to  take  over  possession  of  Xew  France  on  Ijehalf  of  the 
Crown,  dismissed  the  several  actions.* 

Un  the  24th  of  February,  1663,  the  Company  resigned  its 
charter,  and  the  King  accepted  the  charge,  with  somewhat  un- 
gracious reflections  on  the  shortcomings  of  the  One  Hundred 
Associates,  which,  had  he  been  able  to  look  forward  to  his  own 
ill  success  as  an  administrator,  he  would  have  had  some  hesitation 
in  making.  Bishop  Laval  was  at  court  at  the  time  with  his  budget 
of  charges  against  Governor  d'Avaugour.  ]\Iazarin  was  dying; 
and  Colbert  was  entering  on  power,  impatient  to  rival  his  pre- 
decessor, the  great  Cardinal,  as  a  colonial  minister.  The  Bishop, 
having  easily  triumphed  over  d'Avaugour,  returned  to  his 
diocese  with  a  new  Governor  and  a  new  constitution.  The  history 
of  New  France  as  a  Crown  Colony  thus  began  in  1663. 

The  first   adminstration   under   the  new   constitution,   if   that 

*  Mons.  Sebastien  Cramoisy,  the  famous  printer  of  the  Relations,  was  one  of 
the  incorporators. 


THE    CONSTITUTION    OF    1663.  373 

can  be  called  a  constitution  which  gave  no  cllectual  representation 
to  the  rights  of  the  people,  was  that  of  the  Clievalier  de  ^Itzy. 
Though  de  Alezy's  short  rule  was  i)olitically  of  small  ac- 
count, it  was  distinguished  by  a  bitter  quarrel  between  himself 
and  his  friend,  the  Bishop,  over  the  liquor  traffic  and  the  imposi- 
tion of  tithes.  The  controversy  reached  such  a  pitch  that  the 
Bishop  excommunicated  the  Governor,  receiving  him  back  into  the 
Church  only  on  his  recanting  his  errors,  just  before  his  death.  The 
quarrel  convulsed  the  whole  community.  But  the  King,  instead 
of  seeking  a  corrective  in  some  measure  of  moderate  popular 
control,  riveted  new  trammels  of  officialism  on  the  submissive 
colonists,  and  increased  the  already  excessive  power  of  the 
Church.  For,  to  replace  the  unfortunate  de  Mezy,  there  came  out 
to  govern  the  struggling  and  straggling  population  of  2,500 
Frenchmen,  scattered  over  the  vast  territory  from  Acadia  to  Lake 
Superior,  a  Lieutenant-General,  representing  His  Majesty,  a 
Governor,  and  an  Intendant.  So  attenuated  was  the  population 
that  the  very  first  decree  of  the  King,  as  colonial  ruler,  was  to 
cancel  the  title  to  all  uncultivated  lands,  in  the  hopeless  endeavor 
to  concentrate  the  population  and  thus  render  it  easier  for  them 
to  defend  themselves  against  the  Iroquois.  The  plan,  however, 
was  impracticable  and,  though  the  order  to  enforce  it  was  re- 
peated, it  seems  not  to  have  been  carried  out,  even  tentatively.* 
To  return  to  the  constitution.  The  edict  of  Louis  XIV.  of 
April,  1663,  constituted  a  Sovereign  Council  in  imitation  of  the 
Council  of  State  of  the  parent  kingdom.  It  was  to  sit  and  deliber- 
ate in  Quebec,  unless  the  King  ordered  otherwise.  Its  members 
were  to  be  de  Mezy,  as  Governor  for  the  time  being,  representing 
the  King ;  Bishop  Laval,  or  the  principal  ecclesiastic,  whoever  he 
might  be,  as  representative  of  the  Bishop ;  five  councillors,  to  be 
chosen  for  one  year  by  the  Governor  and  the  Bishop ;  and  a  pro- 
curenr,  empowered  to  administer  oaths.  The  coimcil  was  author- 
ized to  take  cognizance  of  all  cases,  civil  and  criminal,  following 
as  nearly  as  possible  the  procedure  of  the  Parliament  of  Paris. 
The  King,  however,  reserved  to  himself  the  right  of  changing  or 

*  Talon's  Three  Bourgs,  near  Quebec,  were  laid  out  as  experimental  defensive 
villages. 


374  OUEBFX   IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

abrogating  laws  and  ordinances  at  his  good  pleasure.  The  Coun- 
cil, besides  being  the  highest  court  of  appeal,  was  empowered  to 
supervise  the  public  finances,  pass  laws  for  the  regulation  of  the 
trafiic  in  furs  with  the  Indians,  as  well  as  of  interstate  trade  and 
commerce ;  to  create  and  control  a  police  force  for  the  whole 
colony ;  and  to  establish  courts  and  appoint  judges  of  the  first  in- 
stance for  the  districts  of  Quebec,  Three  Rivers  and  Montreal.* 

The  nomination  of  the  first  secretary  of  Council  was  vested  in 
the  Governor  and  the  Bisliop.  The  five  councillors,  though  not 
elected  by  the  people,  were  charged  to  keep  themselves  in  touch 
with  the  people,  and  with  popular  needs,  as  brought  to  their  notice 
by  the  syndics  of  the  urban  and  village  communities. 

The  new  constitution  possessed  even  less  of  a  popular  charac- 
ter than  tlie  provisional  decree  of  1647.  It  gave  co-ordinate  au- 
thority to  ecclesiastical  and  civil  chiefs,  and  became  thus  the  source 
of  endless  confusion.  It  excluded  the  people  from  that  faint  trace 
of  representation  which,  under  the  constitution  of  1647,  they  en- 
joyed through  the  direct  influence  of  the  syndics  in  its  delibera- 
tions. The  constitution  underwent  a  slight  modification  in  1675, 
not  in  the  direction  of  greater  popularization,  but  of  greater  cen 
tralization,  through  the  growing  influence  of  the  Intendant,  whose 
duty,  as  confidential  agent  of  the  Colonial  Minister,  was  to  act  as 

*  Very  strange  cases  came  up  in  appeal  before  the  Council.  For  instance, 
Louis  Gaboury  was  condemned  by  the  Judge  of  the  Prevoste  Court  to  pay  a  cow 
and  its  milk  for  one  year,  to  be  bound  to  the  public  post  for  three  hours,  and  to 
be  led  to  the  door  of  the  church  of  the  Island  of  Orleans,  where  on  his  knees, 
with  his  hands  joined  and  his  head  bared,  he  had  to  ask  pardon  of  God,  the 
King  and  the  law  for  having  eaten  meat  during  Lent  without  permission  of  the 
Church.  In  addition  he  was  condemned  to  pay  a  penalty  of  twenty  francs,  to  be 
applied  to  works  of  piety  and  to  the  cost  of  defraying  the  expenses  of  said  parish. 
The  sentence  was  slightly  mitigated  on  apjDeal  to  the  Sovereign  Council. 

According  to  Ferland,  there  are  on  the  Sovereign  Council  only  three  or  four 
suits  against  persons  accused  of  sacrilege.  In  i66q  two  soldiers  were  accused  of 
carrying  about  their  persons  symbols  accounted  to  be  magical,  and  of  having  used 
them  for  improper  purposes.  They  were  condemned  to  pay  a  fine  and  to  suffer 
imprisonment,  the  Council  further  decreeing  that  they  should  be  taught  the  error 
of  their  ways — a  decidedly  milder  course  than  putting  them  to  death,  which  would 
at  one  time  have  been  done  in  New  England.  An  interesting  case  is  quoted  by 
Chauveau  in  his  Memoir  on  the  Sovereign  Council  :  the  wife  of  Jarques  Fournier 
was  accused  of  irreverence  in  printing  a  petition  to  Frontenac  against  the /;-^c//r^?^r 
of  the  Jesuits,  couched  in  burlesque  language,  partly  in  prose  and  partly  in  verse. 
The  Governor  enjoyed  the  joke  and  replied  in  the  same  strain,  but  this  did  not 
protect  her  from  prosecution  and  fine;  though,  at  the  intercession  of  the  Governor, 
the  fine  was  turned  over  to  her  children. 


CREATION    OF    THE    WEST    FNDIA    COMPANY.  375 

a  check  on  the  (jovernor,  in  case  the  latter  might  be  inchned  to 
yield  to  local  influences.  In  1675,  the  King,  after  preluding  his 
edict  by  announcing  the  abolition  of  the  Company  of  the  West 
Indies,  and  the  entire  and  absolute  assumption  of  the  government 
by  himself,  added  to  the  number  of  councillors  designated  by  the 
Edict  of  1663,  the  Intendant  and  two  additional  members, 
assigning  to  the  Intendant  the  third  place  in  the  council  chamber, 
and  appointing  him  its  President.  Duchesneau  was  the  In- 
tendant sent  out  in  that  year.  The  quarrels  which  then  arose  as  to 
precedence  between  him  and  Frontenac  were  even  more  acrimoni- 
ous than  any  between  the  Governor  and  the  Bishop.  This  con- 
troversy waxed  hottest  in  1679-1680,  till  it  was  settled  that  the 
Governor,  should  receive  his  full  title  of  Governor  and 
Lieutenant-General,  but  not  that  of  Chief  and  President  of  the 
Cotmcil ;  and  Duchesneau  that  of  Intendant  of  Justice,  Police  and 
Finance,  and  that  the  Intendant,  as  commanded  by  His  Majesty 
in  1675,  should  fill  the  seat  and  fulfil  the  function  of  President  of 
the  Council.  Frontenac  had  come  out  as  Governor  in  1672,  when 
Talon  was  still  Intendant.  One  of  his  first  acts  illustrates  the  con- 
flict between  his  own  ideas  of  what  was  good  for  the  colony  and 
those  of  the  King.  Believing  he  could  popularize  the  govern- 
ment and  advance  the  interests  of  the  colony  by  convoking  a  rep- 
resentative assembly  of  the  clergy,  nobility,  judiciary  and  com- 
mons, to  discuss  public  afl^airs,  after  the  manner  of  the  States 
General,  he  summoned  such  a  parliament  accordingly,  and  it  met 
in  the  church  of  the  Jesuits.  The  Intendant,  Talon,  with  admir- 
able caution,  absented  himself  on  the  plea  of  indisposition.  He 
had  a  suspicion  that  the  action  of  the  impulsive  Count  would  not 
meet  with  the  approval  of  their  royal  master.  He  was  right,  for 
in  reply  to  a  dispatch  reporting  what  he  had  done  the  Governor 
received  something  very  like  a  reprimand  from  the  Minister,  who 
reminded  him  that  the  King  had  ceased  to  convoke  the  Etats 
Gencraiix,  instructing  him  at  the  same  time,  not  only  to  refuse  all 
demands  by  the  people  for  popular  representation,  but  even  to 
suppress  the  election  of  all  syndics,  if  that  could  be  done  without 
exciting  popular  commotion.  The  new  constitution  was  far, 
therefore,  from  being  drawn  on  popular  lines. 


376  QUEBEC   IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

The  independent,  almost  rebellious,  bearing  of  England's  col- 
onies towards  the  mother  country  offered  a  warning  to  Colbert 
and  his  master,  Louis,  to  keep  their  own  colonies  well  in  check. 
In  obedience  to  this  policy  a  year  was  spent  in  framing  a  consti- 
tution for  a  Company  that,  in  theory,  was  to  avoid  all  the  errors 
of  the  preceding  ones.  In  a  long  preamble  the  King  explained  that, 
as  the  Company  of  the  One  Himdred  Associates  had  failed,  and 
had  consented  to  the  cancellation  of  its  charter,  on  condition  of 
being  reimbursed  certain  of  its  losses,  he  declared  created  the 
Company  of  the  West  Indies,  which  is  to  absorb  the  Company  of 
the  Terra  Firma  of  America,  and  its  fleet,  and  to  be  composed  of 
shareholders  whose  operations  will  embrace  the  west  coast  of 
Africa,  South  America  between  the  Amazon  and  the  Orinoco, 
Acadia,  Newfoundland  and  Canada.  The  commercial  ex- 
ploitation of  these  regions  is  only  the  secondary  object  of  their 
organization ;  the  first  is  the  Christianization  of  the  native  tribes. 
To  this  end  the  Company  must  transport  and  maintain  enough 
priests  to  convert  the  Indians  to  the  Catholic  Apostolic  Roman 
religion,  and  must  also  build  churches.  All  the  subjects  of 
the  King,  as  well  as  foreigners,  might  become  shareholders,  and 
nobles  would  not  lose  dignity  or  privileges  by  investing  in  its  se- 
curities. The  minimum  subscription  was  3,000  livres.  Those 
subscribing  10,000  to  20,000  livres  might  vote.  Those  subscribing 
more  than  20,000  might  be  elected  to  the  directorate,  and  be  en- 
titled to  the  rank  of  bourgeois  in  whatever  town  they  lived.  For- 
eigners investing  the  sum  of  20,000  francs  in  the  Company  would 
be  entitled  to  the  right  of  French  citizenship  while  stockholders, 
and,  if  they  retained  their  interest  for  twenty  years,  might  be- 
come Frenchmen  without  taking  out  letters  of  naturalization,  and 
their  relations  would  inherit.  The  head  office  was  to  be  in  Paris, 
and  the  number  of  directors  nine.  The  Company  was  granted 
exclusive  privileges  of  trading  within  the  sphere  of  its  operations, 
and  all  ships  and  their  cargoes  trading  illegally  within  these  limits 
were  subject  lo  confiscation.  A  bounty  of  30  livres  was  promised 
on  each  ton  of  merchandise  imported  into  the  colonies,  and  40 
livres  for  each  ton  exported  to  France  in  the  Company's  ships. 
Goods  admitted  to  France  in  the  Company's  ships  could  be  ex- 


MISFORTUNES    OF    THE    COMPANY.  T^'JJ 

ported  to  foreign  countries  witliout  paying  export  duty.  The 
Company  was  endowed,  like  its  predecessor,  with  all  the  rights 
and  privileges  of  seigneurs  in  all  new  countries  which  it  might 
conquer  during  the  forty  years  of  its  charter,  as  well  as  over  the 
whole  vast  territory  designated  above,  the  King  reserving  only 
foi  ct  hommage  as  liege,  which  the  Company  must  render  on  the 
succession  of  each  king  with  a  gold  crown  of  the  weight  of  thirty 
marks.  But  while  enjoying  seignorial  rights  the  Company  might 
deed  its  land,  contrary  to  the  feudal  custom  in  any  part  of  France. 
The  Company  might  work  mines  without  paying  the  crown  any 
royalty,  build  forts,  manufacture  implements  of  war,  levy  troops 
for  defence,  and  equip  vessels  of  war.  The  Company  might 
nominate  Governors  for  confirmation  by  the  King,  and  make 
treaties  of  ofifence  and  defence  with  the  kings  and  princes  of  the 
colonies — the  chiefs  of  the  red  and  black  men.  The  appointment 
of  judges  and  nomination  of  the  members  of  the  Sovereign  Coun- 
cil was  vested  in  the  Council  subject  to  confirmation  by  the  King. 
The  legal  code  to  be  used  was  the  Coutuinc  de  Pans.  As  an  in- 
ducement to  the  savages  to  adopt  Christianity,  their  conversion 
would  entitle  them  to  French  citizenship,  and  artisans  who  had 
worked  in  the  colony  for  ten  consecutive  years  were  to  1)e  reputed 
Maitres  de  Chefs  d'Oeuvres  throughout  the  kingdom.  To  assist 
the  Company  the  King  lent  it  ten  \wv  cent,  of  the  value  of  its 
capital  stock.  Of  many  of  these  privileges  the  Company  never 
availed  itself — among  others  the  privilege  of  nominating  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Council ;  but  their  chief  clerk  occupied  a  seat  in  the 
Council  next  to  the  Intendant. 

The  stock  of  the  Company  thus  royally  patronized  was  readily 
subscribed,  and  within  six  months  a  fleet  of  over  forty  vessels  was 
armed  and  equipped ;  but  in  less  than  three  years  the  whole  capital 
had  been  absorbed  in  part  payment  of  previous  rights  and  by 
losses.  In  November,  1667,  the  balance  due  on  the  islands  of 
the  Antilles  was  620,000  livres,  and  on  current  account  300,000, 
while  the  fleet,  through  the  loss  of  ships  at  the  hands  of  the  Eng- 
lish and  by  accident,  had  been  reduced  to  thirty-two,  the  largest 
of  which  was  only  of  400  tons  burden.  Such  a  protest  was  raised 
against  the  monopoly  in  France,  that  the  King  was  induced  to 


378  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

curtail  certain  of  the  privileges,  but  others  were  accorded  in  their 
stead.  Nevertheless,  by  1672  the  Company  was  hopelessly  ruined 
and  in  debt  3,523,000  francs.  A  commission  was  then  appointed 
to  report  on  its  condition,  and  to  advise.  The  advice  was  to  wind 
up  the  old  concern  and  to  create  another  company  whose  opera- 
tions should  be  restricted  to  Senegal.  The  King  remitted  the  loan 
made  to  the  old  Company ;  returned  the  shareholders  the  original 
value  of  their  shares ;  assumed  possession  of,  and  absolute  do- 
minion over,  all  the  territory  which  had  been  covered  by  the  Com- 
pany's trading  privileges  and  administrative  control ;  and  threw 
the  trade  of  the  Antilles  and  Canada  open  to  his  subjects.  This, 
however,  was  far  from  meaning  free  trade  in  the  modern  sense. 

Before  the  West  India  Company  went  into  bankruptcy,  the 
King,  who  had  assumed  the  government  of  the  Colony,  determin- 
ed to  make  effective  provision  for  its  administration  and  protec- 
tion. To  conquer  the  Iroquois,  he  sent  out  troops  under  the 
command  of  /\lexandre  de  Prouville,  Marquis  de  Tracy,  who, 
as  Lieutenant-General,  was  to  represent  him  in  his  South  Ameri- 
can, West  Indian  and  Canadian  possessions ;  but  it  was  under- 
stood that  he  would  only  hold  this  pre-eminent  office  for  a  short 
period,  or  until  things  had  quieted  down  in  Canada.  Mons.  de 
Courcelle  was  appointed  as  Governor  and  Mons.  Talon  as  Intend- 
ant.  Talon  had  won  experience  and  distinction  as  Intendant  of 
Hainaut,  and  proved  to  be  one  of  the  best  administrators  ever  sent 
to  Canada.  The  Marquis  de  Tracy  had  left  France  the  autumn 
previous  with  four  companies  of  the  Carignan-Salieres  Regiment, 
but,  as  his  instructions  required  him  to  take  over  Cayenne  from 
the  Dutch,  he  visited  the  West  Indies  before  proceeding  to  Canada, 
where  he  landed  on  June  30th,  1665.  The  four  companies  of  his 
troops,  and  others  to  the  total  numl)er  of  1,200,  landed  during  the 
course  of  the  summer,  officered  by  men  who  have  attached  their 
names  to  Canadian  geography,  such  as  Mm.  de  Saliere,  de  Repen- 
tigny,  de  Sorel  and  de  Berthier.  One  of  the  first  official  acts  of  the 
Lieutenant-General  was  to  have  the  edict  establishing  the  West 
India  Company  registered  bv  the  Sovereign  Council,  thus  inau- 
gurating the  operation  of  the  new  Company.     The  Governor  and 


cf..Mr 


f^ 


KJ 


^5-- 


<   >     >      -> 


talon's  census  of  1666.  379 

Intendant  arrived  at  the  seat  of  their  government  on  the   12th 
September,  1665. 

With  the  arrival  in  Quebec  of  high  officials,  representing  the 
august  majesty  of  Louis  XIV'.,  and  faintly  rellecling  the  glories 
of  his  court,  accompanied,  moreover,  l)y  a  garrison  of  from  1,000 
to  1,200  men  of  the  great  monarch's  army,  including  four  com- 
panies of  one  of  the  most  distinguished  of  his  regiments,  which 
liad  fought  and  conquered  over  all  Europe,  from  Italy  to  the  Ne- 
therlands, and  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Adriatic ;  with  the  creation 
of  the  Sovereign  Council,  modeled  after  the  King's  Council  of 
State,  but  exercising  in  addition  the  functiojis  of  the  Parliament 
of  Paris ;  with  the  prospect  in  the  near  future  of  the  erection  of 
the  Apostolic  \'icarate  into  the  Bishopric  of  Quebec,  and  the  or- 
ganization of  a  cathedral  chapter ;  and  with  the  recent  addition  of 
a  theological  seminary  to  the  large  college  already  possessed  by 
the  Jesuits,  Quebec  had  sprung  from  the  rank  of  a  village  to  the 
dignity  and  dimensions  of  a  town. 

Nevertheless,  despite  all  these  special  advantages,  it  did  not 
prosper  commercially  or  grow  in  population.  Talon  gives  the 
population  of  Canada  in  1666  as  3,568,  distributed  as  follows: 

Quebec    678 

Beaupre 555 

Beauport    1 72 

Island  of  Orleans 47 ^ 

St.  Jean  Francois,  St.  Michel 156 

Sillery 217 

Notre  Dame  des  Anges  and  St.  Charles...  118 

Cote  Lauzon   6 

Montreal    ;•••;•'  ^^-^ 

Three  Rivers    .'.  y'J.l^ll  T  461 

Total 34i<'^ 

In  the  following  year  he  gives  as  the  population  of  all  New 
France  4,312,  of  whom  1,566  were  capable  of  bearing  arms,  88 
were  young  men  of  marriageable  age,  55  unmarried  girls  over 
fourteen  years  of  age.     There  were   11,174  acres  of  land  under 


380  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

cultivation,  and  2,136  horned  cattle.  Horses  were  still  rare.  One 
had  been  given  to  Governor  Montmagny  in  1647,  ^^^  we  do  not 
read  of  any  others  being  shipped  to  Canada  till  1665,  when  twelve 
were  brought  out  by  Mons.  Bourdon,  who  had  gone  to  France  to 
protest  against  Governor  de  Mezy's  arbitrary  actions.  It  was 
not  Talon's  fault  that  so  little  progress  was  made.  He  believed 
in  the  possibilities  of  the  country,  and  pleaded  for  colonists  and 
for  funds.  But  Colbert's  reply  was  not  encouraging.  The  King, 
he  said,  refused  to  depopulate  France  in  order  to  people  Canada. 
In  truth,  if  one-fourth  of  the  men  he  sacrificed,  first  and  last,  to 
his  insatiate  ambition  in  war  could  have  been  induced  to  emigrate, 
they  would  have  settled  the  Iroquois  question  and  other  still 
larger  prol3lenis.  He  did,  however,  spare  some  money  and  men ; 
but  so  much  of  his  time  was  spent  in  deciding  trivialities  alto- 
gether beyond  the  reach  of  his  knowledge  and  experience,  that 
he  could  not  help  exaggerating  to  his  own  mind  his  efforts 
on  behalf  of  Canada.  This  explains  probably  how  it  was 
that  ten  years  afterwards  he  told  Frontenac  that  he  could 
not  believe  that  there  were  only  7,832  souls  in  all  Canada, 
because  he  had  sent  a  greater  number  than  that  him- 
self to  the  colony  during  the  previous  fifteen  years.  Every- 
one, however,  was  making  calculations,  and  the  King  may  have 
confounded  the  Bishop's  calculation  as  to  the  fecundity  of  the 
population  with  the  Intendant's  actual  return,  for  the  King  in 
1672  wrote  to  Talon  that  the  Mons.  de  Laval  assured  him  that 
"there  will  be  1,100  births  next  year."  The  King's  response  to 
Talon's  appeal  for  aid  was  substantially  that  he  needed  every 
Frenchman  able  to  carry  arms  as  food  for  powder,  but  that,  for 
that  very  reason,  there  were  plenty  of  marriageable  girls  to  spare, 
notwithstanding  that  he  had  already  sent  many  lusty  wenches  to 
Canada.  The  young  women  referred  to  certainly  brought  their 
virtues  and  their  charms  to  an  active  market,  for  Colbert  in  1671 
expresses  the  King's  pleasure  at  hearing  that  of  the  165  shipped 
the  year  previous,  only  sixteen  remained  unmated.  The  poor  bach- 
elors, in  fact,  had  no  other  choice  than  to  marry,  for  unless,  within 
fifteen  days  after  the  arrival  of  a  batch  of  girls,  they  chose  a 
partner,   their   license   to   hunt   was   cancelled.        What     wonder 


SLOW   GROWTH    OF   Till-:   COLONY.  381 

that  many  of  them  preferred  to  choose  a  squaw  at  will  instead 
of  taking  a  wife  of  their  own  nation  under  compulsion? 

To  encourage  marriage  the  King  was  willing  to  spare 
a  trifle  from  the  wealth  he  lavished  on  his  own  illegitimate 
children.  By  an  ordinance  of  1676  parents  with  ten  or  more 
children  born  in  wedlock,  and  not  vowed  to  celibacy,  were 
granted  an  annual  allowance  of  300  livres,  and  an  additional  sum 
of  20  livres  for  each  girl  or  boy  at  the  date  of  their  marriage.  A 
list  exists  of  fifty  young  couples  to  each  of  which  a  marriage  dot 
of  .fifty  francs  was  given  by  the  King.  Nevertheless,  despite  per- 
suasion and  coercion,  the  total  population  in  the  year  1681  had 
only  increased  to  9,666,  and  that  of  Quebec  to  1,345.  The  colony 
of  Virginia  was  founded  in  1607,  only  one  year  before  Champlain 
established  Quebec  as  a  trading  post,  and  by  1642  it  contained 
15,000  whites  and  300  negroes.  New  England,  though  only 
twenty-two  years  old,  contained  26,000  souls.  The  slower  prog- 
ress of  Canada  as  compared  with  the  English  seaboard  colonies 
may  at  first  sight  be  attributed  to  the  same  climatic  and  geo- 
graphic causes  as  operate  to-day  in  retarding  the  progress  of 
Quebec.  But  Louisiana  was  in  many  respects  as  favorably  situated 
as  Virginia,  yet  it  lagged  far  behind  her  in  growth.  One  must 
seek  the  explanation  elsewhere,  and  no  one  reason  will  perhaps 
suffice.  Rigid  bureaucracy  in  politics,  monopoly  in  trade,  ultra- 
montanism  in  religion,  and  interference  by  the  Church,  both  in 
politics  and  in  domestic  life,  all  combined  to  make  the  colony 
unpopular  in  France.  The  exclusion  of  the  Huguenots  is  not 
an  adequate  explanation.  It  is  doubtful  wliether  they  would 
have  emigrated  to  Canada,  even  if  permitted.  Very  few  took 
refuge  after  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes  in  New 
England.  Puritan  rigidity  was  not  attractive  to  them.  England, 
under  William  and  Mary,  was  a  more  congenial  home  than 
America.  Many  of  the  Reformers  wandered  in  search  of  lib- 
erty far  away  to  the  little  Dutch  colony  of  the  Cape  of  (jood 
Hope,  where  the  Jouberts  and  the  Du  Plessis  still  retain,  not  only 
the  names  of  their  forefathers,  but  their  ancestral  stern  opinions 
and  indomitable  determination  and  courage.  Nevertheless,  the 
restrictions  of  personal  liberty  in  New  France  seem  not  only  to 


382  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

have  prevented  immigration  to  Canada,  but  to  have  driven  settlers 
out  of  New  France  back  to  the  motherland,  for  that  there  was  a 
steady  reflux  the  official  correspondence  conclusively  demon- 
strates. Even  had  New  France  been  founded  on  the  same  prin- 
ciples as  New  England  and  Virginia,  Frenchmen,  unless  of  the 
reformed  faith,  and  driven  out  by  persecution,  would  not  have 
been  any  more  willing  to  leave  old  France  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury than  they  are  in  the  twentieth.*  Had  Canada  been  a 
refuge  for  the  Huguenots,  as  New  England  was  for  the  Puritan, 
and  had  the  home  government  not  interfered  in  the  development 
of  the  country,  we  might  possibly  have  seen  a  new  nationality 
created  in  the  Western  World,  which,  retaining  Gallic  character- 
istics, would  have  developed  a  type  of  national  existence  as  dif- 
ferent from  that  of  Old  France  as  the  New  England  type  now 
differs  from  that  of  Old  England.  It  was  not  to  be.  New  France 
was  destined  to  stagger  under  the  weight  of  Old  France's  political 
and  ecclesiastical  rule  until  she  sank  under  the  burden. 

Still,  to  be  just,  it  must  be  admitted  that  Canada  lacked  New 
England's  splendid  opportunities  for  commerce.  The  Puritan 
came  to  the  sterile  shores  of  ^^lassachusetts  for  gain  as  well  as  for 
conscience  sake,  and  he  soon  learned  that  it  was  more  profitable  to 
turn  his  attention  to  trade  than  to  agriculture,  for  the  crops  which 
the  bleak  land  yielded  were  scanty  compared  with  the  rich  reward 
to  be  reaped  from  sea-going  traffic.  The  French  of  the  St.  Law- 
rence, even  if  they  coulfl  have  defied  the  navigation  laws  of  the 
land  as  arrogantly  and  successfully  as  the  New  Englanders  did 
those  of  England,  could  not  escape  being  icebound  for  half  the 
year,  nor  do  away  with  the  fact  tliat  they  were  planted  two  hun- 
dred leagues  from  the  ocean.  The  command  of  the  St.  Lawrence 
gave  France  the  opportunity  of  controlling  the  heart  of  the  con- 
tinent, but  she  forfeited  all  the  advantage  which  this  magnificent 
position  gave  her  by  not  fighting,  as  she  should  have  done, 
for  an  ocean  outlet  in  the  beginning.  Virginia  and  New  Eng- 
land instinctively  appreciated  their  advantage  and  her  weakness 

*  While  we  need  not  adopt  Balzac's  theory  that  the  Englishman  is  an  emi- 
grant because  he  is  in  a  hurry  to  get  away  from  his  odious  island,  we  can  under 
stand  the  unwillingness  of  the  Frenchman  to  leave  a  land  that  possesses  all  the  at- 
tractions of  every  other. 


c 


3    n. 

3  - 

3     OJ 


THE     CANADIAN     MILITIA.  383 

when  they  so  persistently  attacked  her  seaboard,  and  drove  her 
first  from  Acadia  and  Newfoundland,  and  then  from  Cape 
Breton. 

The  Marquis  de  Tracy  who  had  supreme  control  as  Lieu- 
tenant-General  of  the  King,  and  commanded  in  person  the  cam- 
paign against  the  Iroquois  in  1666,  returned  to  France  in  1667. 
In  his  administrative  capacity  he  seems  to  have  interfered  as  little 
as  possible  with  the  actions  of  the  Governor,  de  Courcelle,  and  the 
Intendant.  The  latter  had  not  been  a  month  in  the  colony  before 
he  published  a  tariff  fixing  the  price  of  merchandise  and  the  value 
of  beaver  skins,  the  only  currency  used  for  purposes  of  barter. 
The  dearest  article  was  brandy — 140  livres  the  barrel.  A  white 
Normandy  blanket  the  trader  might  exchange  for  six  beaver  skins, 
while  one  skin  was  to  be  counted  worth  two  pounds  of  powder  or 
one  pound  of  lead.  A  barrel  of  Indian  corn  was  valued  at  six 
skins,  De  Tracy  probably  recognized  that  his  mission  was  not  to 
regulate  prices,  but  to  reconcile  the  civil  and  ecclesiastical  powers 
of  the  colony,  and  conquer  or  restrain  the  Iroquois  confederacy. 
While  in  Canada  he  succeeded  in  repressing  the  impatience  of 
Courcelle  under  ecclesiastical  interference,  but  it  was  quite  beyond 
his  powder  to  establish  any  rules  adequate  to  prevent  friction  under 
later  adminstrations.  He  was  an  old  man  of  over  sixty,  yet  he 
conducted  in  person  a  decisive  campaign  against  the  Mohawks  in 
the  autumn  of  the  year  following  his  arrival,  which  dispelled  from 
the  Iroquois  mind  any  hopes  which  Courcelle's  ill-advised  winter 
campaign  may  have  excited. 

In  these  campaigns  the  Canadian  militia  first  displayed  that 
wonderful  endurance  and  courage  wliich  has  ever  since  character- 
ized it,  and  exhibited  such  soldierly  qualities  that  the  men  of  the 
Carignan-Salieres  regiment  did  not  think  it  derogatory  to  treat 
them  as  comrades.  The  campaign  was  bloodless,  but  was  none 
the  less  elTective  in  demonstrating  to  the  Indians  the  power  of 
France  and  her  ability  to  take  the  offensive.  De  Tracy  had  the 
satisfaction,  the  winter  before  he  sailed,  of  making  a  peace  with 
the  Mohawks,  which  secured  tranquillity  to  the  colony  for  several 
years. 


CHAPTER    XX. 

The  Intendant  Talon,  Commercial  Activity,  and  Terri- 
torial Expansion. 

During  the  period  from  1665  until  Frontenac  appeared  on  the 
scene  in  1672,  Talon  is  the  most  conspicuous  figure  in  Canada. 
Even  when  temporarily  in  France,  and  represented  in  Canada  by 
Mens,  de  Bouterove,  his  personal  influence  was  paramount,  and 
overshadowed  that  of  the  Governor,  the  Bishop  and  the  Council. 
His  tact  and  recognition  of  the  Bishop's  and  the  Jesuits'  services 
prevented  their  publicly  opposing  him  on  account  of  his  Gallican 
tendencies,  and  saved  the  people  of  Quebec  from  the  unedi- 
fying  spectacle  of  endless  bickering  in  high  places,  and  himself 
from  waste  of  time  and  energy  in  quarreling  over  trifles.  He  could 
thus  devote  his  talents  to  an  intelligent  effort  to  discover  other  re- 
sources in  the  country  than  lumting,  or  despoiling  the  Indians 
who  did  the  hunting.  He  probably  first  conceived  dimly,  as  the 
West  was  reached  and  rumors  of  the  ^Mississippi  country  floated 
about  him,  the  policy  subsequently  adopted  by  Frontenac,  of  en- 
circling the  English  colonies  in  a  ring  of  French  posts,  and  thus 
shutting  them  in  between  the  sea  and  the  Alleghenies.  The  policy 
is  usually  represented  as  that  of  the  French  government :  it  was 
rather  that  of  the  far-sighted  Frenchman  whom  Colbert  sent  out 
than  of  the  central  power  itself. 

Nevertheless,  to  judge  by  the  instructions  given  to  him  in  Paris, 
and  bearing  date  March  27th,  1665,  it  was  intended  that  his  first 
care  should  be  to  hold  the  balance  between  the  temporal  and  ec- 
clesiastical authorities — the  latter  represented  by  the  Bishop  and 
the  Jesuits — in  such  a  manner  that  the  ecclesiastical  power 
should  be  subordinate  to  the  civil  in  the  management  of  affairs. 
He  was  advised,  however,  as  the  Jesuits  had  not  only  local 
knowledge    and    influence,    but    the    correspondence    and    min- 


i/ 


^-^^f 


Talon, 


INDUSTRIES    OF   THE    COLONY.  385 

utes  of  the  council,  to  wlieedle  out  of  them  all  they  could  give  or 
tell,  without  exciting  their  suspicions. 

During  Talon's  second  administration  he  was  instructed  to 
use  the  Recollets  and  the  Sulpicians  r^s  a  buffer  against  the  pre- 
tensions of  the  Jesuits.  By  the  same  mail  Colbert  wrote  to 
Bishop  Laval,  the  Jesuits'  friend,  assviring  him  of  the  King's  high 
esteem,  and  flattering-  him  with  the  declaration  that  the  colony 
had  had  no  life  until  he  devoted  himself  to  its  welfare. 

While  Talon  was  keeping  the  peace  in  the  official  household, 
he  was  marking  the  passage  of  Canada  from  the  control  of  a  trad- 
ing company  to  that  of  the  government,  by  inducing  the  people 
to  engage  in  manufacturing,  so  as  to  be,  not  importers,  but  ex- 
porters, of  such  things  as  the  soil  was  capable  of  producing. 
Wheat  was  already  raised  in  excess  of  home  consumption,  and 
was  exported.  Vaudreuil  gives  the  exportation  of  flour  in  1709 
as  958,955  pounds,  while  lumber,  which  had  always  been  an  article 
of  export,  was  shipped  in  large  quantities.  We  find  Talon  begging 
that  a  millwright  may  be  sent  out  capable  of  erecting  sawmills.  As 
a  subordinate  industry  to  lumbering  and  clearing  of  the  soil,  the 
making  of  crude  potash  from  wood-ashes  had  always  been  prac- 
ticed, and  the  export  of  black  ash  was  now  beginning.  A  tannery 
was  started,  and  shipbuilding  on  a  scale  not  heretofore  attempted 
was  giving  employment  to  the  Quebec  carpenters.  Colbert  con- 
gratulated Talon  in  1671  on  the  fact  that  three  sliips  of  home 
build  had  sailed  with  cargoes  from  Canada  to  the  West  In- 
dies ;  and  Father  Dablon,  in  the  preface  to  his  Relation  of 
1671-1672,  speaks  of  a  500  ton  ship  being  under  construction,  and 
of  one  still  larger  being  designed.  Cod  fishing  and  sealing  on  the 
river  were  stimulated  by  the  right  of  entering  cured  fish  into 
France  and  selling  it  at  the  same  rate  as  though  a  product  of  the 
mother  country.  Even  mining  was  not  neglected.  The  titanifer- 
ous  iron  ores  of  Bale  St.  Paul  were  examined  by  a  Mons.  de  la 
Tesserie,  but,  though  existing  in  large  quantities,  they  were  wisely 
left  untouched.  The  more  fusible  bog  ores  of  the  St.  Maurice 
were  reported  on  favorably  by  the  Sieur  la  Potardiere  in  1668. 
Though  Frontenac  wrote  strongly  in  favor  of  the  building  of  a 
forge,  and  though  his  successor,  Denonville,  reiterated  the  advice, 


386  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

over  fifty  years  elapsed  l)efore  one  was  erected  and  iron  made  in 
New  France.  There  was  no  little  excitement  over  the  report 
that  silver-bearing  galena  had  been  found  in  Gaspe  Basin,  but 
nothing  came  of  it.  Not  so,  however,  regarding  the  discovery  of 
copper  on  Lake  Superior.  The  use  of  malleable  copper  by  the 
Indians  had  early  been  observed  by  the  Europeans,  and  rumors 
of  its  existence  in  the  native  state  had  reached  the  Inten- 
dant  even  before  Father  Dablon,  in  the  Relation  of  1670,  describ- 
ed the  famous  copper  mass  on  the  Lake  Shore.  Talon  some  time 
before  this  had  sent  Jean  Pere,  a  Quebec  merchant,  who  was 
willing  to  travel  far  in  search  of  trade,  to  Lake  Superior  with 
Joliet  to  look  for  copper,  and  had  received  from  him  an  enthusias- 
tic report  on  his  discoveries.  As  for  Joliet  the  atmosphere  of  the 
West  had  inspired  him  with  a  higher  motive  than  gain  ;  he  was 
now  seized  by  that  passion  for  exploration  which  was  destined  to 
render  him  the  joint  discoverer,  with  Father  Marquette,  of  the 
route  from  the  Lakes  to  the  Mississippi. 

All  this  activity  centered  in  Quebec,  where,  instead  of  a  solitary 
ship  or  two,  bringing  the  mails  and  stores,  and  returning  with  pel- 
tries and  a  few  sticks  of  timber,  a  fleet  of  eleven  ships  rode  at  an- 
chor in  the  summer  of  1668.  The  trade  of  the  port  continued  sub- 
sequently to  increase  until  Lower  Canada  became  one  of  the  gran- 
aries of  Europe,  and  its  principal  source  of  lumber.  In  other 
respects  as  well  the  town  grew  in  importance  and  activity,  as 
French  influence  extended  over  the  West,  and  Frenchmen,  if  not 
the  government  of  Versailles,  began  dimly  to  appreciate  the  des- 
tiny which  hovered  over  the  continent,  of  which  they  would  have 
had  chief  control,  had  fate  only  so  willed,  and  had  those  money- 
making,  restless  and  tenacious  nation-builders  on  the  other  side 
of  the  Alleghcnies  not  stood  in  their  way. 

With  the  able  rulers  sent  out  when  France  assumed  the  reins 
of  government,  there  arrived  in  Quebec  many  a  notable  character 
whose  name  still  clings  to  the  soil  of  what  is  now  for  Frenchmen 
a  foreign  land,  though  few  of  those  who  tread  that  soil  ever 
identify  the  scenes  around  them  with  the  heroes  by  whom  the 
primeval  wilderness  was  first  penetrated  and  made  known.       La 


V'^'*^^'>.c- 


u} 


^l^  i 


^1 


QUEBEC  THE  CENTER  OF   ENTERPRISE.  387 

Salle,  with  its  zinc  furnaces  ;  Joliet,  with  its  glowing  steel  works ; 
De  Pere,  in  Wisconsin;  Dululh,  all  alive  witli  ils  railroads,  clocks 
and  huge  lake  steamers  and  their  consorts ;  Marquette,  now  better 
known  as  a  shipping  port  for  Michigan  iron  than  as  the  name  of 
one  of  the  most  saintly  of  the  saints  ;  all  these  places  immortalize 
in  their  names  the  deeds  of  men  who  made  these  closing  years  of 
the  seventeenth  century  memorable  in  the  history  of  the  New 
World. 

These  men  and  many  others  congregated  and  made  their  plans 
in  the  little  town  of  Quebec,  whence  they  scattered  to  do  their 
work.  Some  were  fired  with  religious  zeal,  caught  from  their 
associations  with  the  Seminary,  the  Jesuit  College,  or  the  Recollet 
Monastery.  Others  had  imbibed  the  enthusiasm  of  Talon  and 
Frontenac,  and  saw  visions  of  wealth  for  themselves  and  of  glory 
to  France  from  the  possession  of  the  vast  interior  of  the  great 
continent,  which,  the  further  it  was  penetrated,  revealed  ever 
more  majestic  natural  features,  in  lakes  that  were  inland  seas, 
river  after  river  of  wondrous  length,  prairies  of  boundless  extent 
and  fertility,  stretching  to  the  base  of  mountains  descril)ed  to  be 
of  fabulous  height,  and  which  might  hide  in  their  depths,  as  they 
were  afterwards  found  to  do,  treasures  such  as  had  raised  Spain 
to  the  pinnacle  of  wealth  and  grandeur. 

As  this  amazing  panorama  was  unrolled  before  the  mission- 
aries, the  pioneers  and  c  our  curs  de  hois,  who  met  in  the  churches, 
the  taverns  and  the  chateaus  of  old  Quebec,  there  was  created  one 
of  those  furores  of  exploration  which  seize  on  whole  comnnmities, 
rouse  its  most  ardent  spirits  to  action,  and  usher  in  the  great  cy- 
cles of  geographical  discovery.  Could  Louis  XIV.  have  looked 
with  the  eye  of  imagination  on  the  American  continent,  and  allow- 
ed himself  to  catch  a  spark  of  the  enthusiasm  which  insi)ired  .some 
of  his  servants  in  the  New  World,  events  might  have  taken  a  very 
different  turn.  As  it  was,  he  simply  looked  with  arrogant  indif- 
ference on  foreign  trade,  and  on  the  inroads  which  Fngland  was 
making  on  his  commerce,  though  tlie  liroader  mind  of  Colbert, 
justly  regarded  trade  as  the  mainspring  of  national  greatness  and 
prosperitv.     The  King's  opinion  was  candidly,  if  not  very  intelli- 


388  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

gently,  expressed  when  he  wrote:  "If  the  Enghsh  would  only  be 
satisfied  with  being  traders  and  let  us  be  conquerors,  an  arrange- 
ment could  be  easily  arrived  at.  We  should  be  quite  content 
with  one-fourth  of  the  world's  commerce  and  concede  to  her  the 
rest."  France,  nevertheless,  thanks,  to  a  large  extent,  to  the  in- 
dustry and  intelligence  of  the  minister,  became  the  world's  work- 
shop for  artistic  products,  and  has  remained  so  ever  since.  To 
the  energy  of  the  same  untiring  worker,  spurred  by  the  ambition 
of  his  royal  master,  must  be  attributed  the  building  up  of  the 
French  navy,  as  it  were  by  magic.  Unfortunately,  so  absorbed 
was  the  King  by  war  and  the  machinery  necessary  for  its  pros- 
ecution, and  so  proud  was  he  of  domestic  France,  with  its  palaces 
and  its  factories,  which  he  saw  springing  up  under  the  wand  of 
his  patronage,  that  he  had  neither  money  nor  time  to  bestow  on 
what,  had  he  been  able  to  see  a  little  further  into  the  future,  he 
would  have  recognized,  to  be  not  merely  New  France,  but 
Greater  France. 

During  this  period  of  territorial  and  commercial  expansion,  the 
Church  was  as  active  as  ever,  and  the  rivalry  of  its  several  orders 
helped,  rather  than  hindered,  missionary  work.  There  was  com- 
petition in  the  work  of  saving  souls,  openly  hostile  in  character, 
between  the  Jesuit  and  Recollet  bodies,  and  friendly  between 
the  Jesuits,  the  priests  of  the  Quebec  Seminary  and  the  Sulpicians 
of  Montreal,  the  questions  chiefly  in  debate  being  as  to  their  re- 
spective spheres  of  action  and  influence  among  the  aborigines. 
The  zeal  of  the  clergy,  it  must  be  admitted,  was  scarcely  more 
free  from  the  alloy  of  jealousy  than  that  of  the  laity.  The  Recol- 
lets,  as  we  know,  were  brought  over  by  Talon  to  checkmate  the 
Jesuits.  The  priests  of  the  Seminary  were  not  as  cordial  towards 
the  Jesuit  College  on  the  other  side  of  the  market  place  as  Bishop 
Laval  was  to  its  Superior ;  while  the  Jesuits,  on  their  side,  regard- 
ing all  Xew  France  and  Louisiana  as  their  rightful  field  of  opera- 
tions, resented  the  interference  of  the  barefooted  Friars,  and  did 
not  view  with  favor  the  missionary  efforts  even  of  the  Seminarv 
priests  and  Sulpicians.  The  secular  clergy,  not  without  reason, 
opposed  the  encroachment  of  the  regulars  on  their  parish  pre- 
serves :  and  finally  the  Recollets,  fully  reciprocating  the  dislike  of 


i'*llll,. 


La  ^^alle. 


IMPORTANT   ARRIVALS.  389 

the  Jesuits,  did  not  scruple  to  charge  them  with  exaggerating  the 
success  of  their  ]:oly  endeavors  among  the  ahorigines  as  a  help 
towards  securing"  financial  and  political  aid  in  France. 

In  the  early  summer  of  1675  a  cargo  of  very  diverse  humanity 
sailed  from  France  for  Canada.  Laval,  now  Bishop  of  Quebec 
and  no  friend  to  the  Recollet  Fathers,  was  on  board,  to- 
gether with  the  bustling,  egotistical  Recollet  Friar,  Father  Hen- 
nepin, and  a  man  of  very  dift'erent  character,  already  known  in 
Canada,  and  destined  to  become  famous  as  perhaps  the  most 
daring  and  original  of  all  the  explorers  of  the  Great  West,  Sieur 
Robert  Cavelier  de  La  Salle.  There  were  also  among  the  pas- 
sengers a  number  of  girls  going  to  the  colony  in  search  of  hus- 
bands. The  gallant  Cavelier,  though  educated,  as  Hennepin  as- 
serts, for  the  priesthood  in  a  Jesuit  college,  and  the  merry  girls 
broke  the  tedium  of  the  voyage  by  dancing  and  revelry,  but  as 
these  pastimes  were  indulged  in  under  the  eye  of  the  Bishop  they 
cannot  have  been  very  shocking".  Nevertheless  they  called  forth 
the  severest  reprimand  from  the  Friar,  who,  like  many  an- 
other pious  person,  was  willing  to  "compound  for  sins  he  was 
inclined  to  by  damning  those  he  had  no  mind  to."  To  the  good 
Friar  lying  was  a  venial  offence,  dancing  a  deadly  sin.  Long 
after  La  Salle  was  dead  the  Friar  tried  to  rob  him  of  the  credit  of 
his  discoveries.  He  pretended,  moreover,  that  La  Salle  had  sent 
him  to  what  he  expected  would  be  his  death  in  return  for  the 
scoldings  he  had  given  him  for  unseemly  levity  on  that  otherwise 
unmemorable  voyage.  In  reality  La  Salle  had  merely  given  liim 
an  opportunity  to  achieve  a  little  greatness  on  his  own  account. 

This  w^as  not  the  first  time  La  Salle  had  crossed  the  ocean,  but 
it  was  now  that  he  was  to  begin  that  heroic  effort  to  forestall  the 
English  trade  in  the  Illinois  country,  and  to  win  for  France  the 
Mississippi  from  its  source  to  the  Delta.  Under  the  influence  of 
his  protector,  Frontenac,  he  chose  Recollets  rather  than  Jesuits 
for  the  religious  side  of  his  expedition.  The  youth  and  the  energy 
of  that  sanctimonious  busybody.  Father  Hennepin,  recommended 
him  as  one  of  the  missionaries  of  the  party,  but  fortunately  another 
of  the  same  fraternity.  Father  Zenobe  Membre.  accompanied 
the  expedition,  and  has  left  a  memoir  of  his  chief's  explorations,  as 


390  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

conspicuous  for  its  modesty  as  Hennepin's  story  is  remarkable  for 
the  reverse. 

Though  Louis  XIV.  had  warned  Talon  and  Frontenac  to  con- 
centrate their  limited  forces,  rather  than  scatter  them,  and  in 
pursuance  of  this  policy  to  discourage  western  exploration  and 
trade  expansion  both  Intendant  and  Governor  virtually  defied,  on 
this  point,  the  instructions  of  the  monarch.  They  were  confident 
of  their  own  better  judgment,  and  knew  that  the  Court  could  not 
control  their  actions  at  so  great  a  distance  from  the  seat  of 
authority.  Frontenac  doubtless  believed  that  he  could  rely  on 
the  support  of  the  colonial  minister,  Colbert ;  and.  in  any  case,  he 
felt  that  it  was  vain  to  resist  the  impulse  which  was  carrying 
French  Cc^nada.  westward  and  southward  along  the  great  water- 
ways of  the  coi.tinent.  In  1679-1680  the  Sulpicians,  Dollier 
ind  Gallinee,  explored,  and  mapped  the  north  shore  of  Lake 
Erie,  and  in  the  following  year  St.  Lusson,  La  Salle  and 
Nichola.s  Perrot  were  commissioned  to  explore  the  West,  and 
establish  trading  posts,  which  they  did,  with  the  assistance  of 
the  Jesuit  Fathers  who  had  preceded  them,  at  Michillimackinac, 
Ste.  ]\Iarie  and  elsewhere.  Marquette  and  Joliet  had  reached  the 
Mississippi  by  way  of  Green  Bay  and  the  Wisconsin  River.  Dulhut 
reached  it  and  the  Sioux  country  from  the  western  end  of  Lake 
Superior.  Hennepin  had  met  Dulhut  while  ascending  the  river 
from  the  mouth  of  the  Illinois,  and  at  length,  after  disappoint- 
ments and  failures  that  would  have  broken  the  spirit  of  any  other 
man.  La  Salle  carried  out  his  scheme  for  exploring  the  country  of 
the  Illinois  and  Ohio,  and  reached  the  sea  by  way  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi. These  expeditions — all  imdertaken  probably  at  private 
expense — were  an  outcome  of  the  greater  freedom  of  trade  which 
was  granted  after  the  dissolution  of  the  West  India  Company. 
They  expressed  the  spirit  of  nationality  which  the  new  constitu- 
tion, devoid  though  it  was  of  popular  features,  and  the  passage  of 
government  from  the  company  to  the  crown,  had  excited.  At  the 
same  time  they  also  brought  wealth  to  Quebec,  as  the  furs  from 
those  new  posts  in  the  distant  West  contributed  their  share  to  the 
trade  of  the  port,  and  otherwise  stimulated  the  life  of  the  place. 

Quebec,  however,  was  also  keenly  interested   in  operations 


Map  'if  the  Lakes  and  Mississippi,  made  pmbahly  about  1(580,  as 

tlie  Site  of  Pere  Meynard's  Death  is  Indicated. 

From  tiie  Depot  de  la  Marine. 


ACTIVITY   ()]■■   nil':   CANADIAN    Al  M.ITIA.  39I 

nearer  home  which  shed  histrc  on  the  (,'ana(han  mihtia,  a  race  of 
soldiers  which  has  become  famous  in  the  annals  of  irrej,nilar 
warfare. 

Newfoundland,  which  commanded  the  mouth  of  the  St.  Lavv- 
rence,  was  a  perpetual  menace  to  the  chief  towns  and  ports  of  the 
St.  Lawrence  as  long  as  it  was  held  in  hostile  hands.  The  Can- 
adians of  New  France  recognized  the  important  strategic  position 
of  the  tenth  greatest  island  of  the  world  more  accurately  than  the 
Dominion  does  to-day ;  and  Iberville,  by  his  dashing  campaign  and 
his  capture  of  St.  John's,  should  have  stimulated  France  to  make 
an  effort  to  maintain  permanent  and  complete  possession  of  the 
island. 

But  the  Hudson  Bay  question, as  we  shall  see  in  a  later  chapter, 
assumed  greater  importance  to  the  mercantile  community  of  Que- 
bec than  even  the  possession  of  Newfoundland.  To  defend  the 
rights  of  France  in  that  region  also  the  Canadian  militia  were 
called  into  active  service,  and  responded  with  cheerfulness  and 
promptitude;  for  the  French  Canadian,  unlike  his  English  neigh- 
bors, never  devoted  himself  heart  and  soul  to  trade  or  agriculture. 
He  loved  pleasure  and  he  loved  war,  and  therefore  made  a  good 
soldier.  Previous  to  the  arrival  of  the  Carignan-Salieres  Regi- 
ment in  1665.  but  few  regular  troops  had  been  sent  to  Canada 
from  time  to  time,  and  the  people  had  consequently  been  compelled 
to  defend  themselves.  As  early  as  1649  the  militia  forces  had  been 
organized,  but  the  regular  militia  establishment  of  Canada  dates 
from  a  later  period.  In  the  census  of  1679  there  are  enumerated 
1,800  guns  and  169  pistols.  As  there  were  then  about  the  same 
number  of  Canadian  families  as  of  firearms,  the  inference  is  that 
one  member  of  every  family  at  any  rate  was  enrolled  for  military 
service.  The  militia,  as  organized  by  Talon,  Courcelle  and  Fron- 
tenac.  remains  a  more  or  less  effective  offensive  and  defensive 
force  to  our  own  day,  when  the  law  requires  every  man  to  be  a 
soldier.  The  flagpole  which  has  ever  since  distinguished  the 
rallying  point  of  the  village  militia  was  then  first  raised  in  front  of 
the  captain's  house,  "capitaine  de  cote."  but  the  habitant  is  not  now 
so  often  called  on  to  drop  his  spade  and  shoulder  his  musket  for 


392  QUEBEC  IX  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

actual  warfare  as  in  the  days  when  he  sprang  to  the  summons  ot 
a  Le  Moyne  d'Iberville. 

The  efficiency  of  the  mihtia  was  improved  by  infusion  into  it 
of  the  spirit  and  discipHne  of  the  old  soldiers  of  the  Carignan- 
,  Salieres  regiment,  and  of  contingents  of  other  regiments  which 
were  encouraged  to,  and  did  actually,  settle,  in  Canada  and  join 
the  militia.  There  were  sent  to  Canada  between  1665  and  the  end 
of  the  century  about  4,000  men  as  King's  soldiers,  but  probably  at 
no  one  time  were  there  over  2,000  in  the  colony.  Many  of  the 
rank  and  file  were  mustered  out  in  Canada  and  became  Canadians, 
while  a  number  of  the  officers  accepted  large  grants  of  land  as 
seignories. 

The  Iroquois  no  longer  invaded  the  lower  St.  Lawrence,  but 
the  Richelieu,  the  Ottawa,  and  the  posts  and  mission  stations  on 
the  Lakes  needed  protection :  consequently  the  larger  portion  of 
the  scanty  force  available  was  scattered  west  of  Quebec,  a  small 
garrison,  not  more  than  sufficient  to  give  dignity  to  the  Governor's 
position,  being  retained  at  the  seat  of  government.  The  census 
of  1681  gives  the  number  of  soldiers  in  the  Chateau  as  only 
tAventy-one — no  more  than  a  corporal's  guard. 


CHAPTER  XXt 
Frontcnac  as  Governor. 

De  Courcelle,  as  we  have  related,  came  out  as  the  first  Gover- 
nor after  the  charter  of  the  Compaiiy  of  One  Hundred  Associates 
was  dissolved.  Though  he  had  the  strong  head  and  hand  of 
Talon  to  guide  him,  his  health  broke  down  under  the  worry  and 
fatigue  of  war  and  negotiation  with  Indian  foes  as  dangerous  in 
the  one  as  they  were  treacherous  in  the  other.  Louis  de  Buade, 
Comte  de  Palluau  et  FrontcMiae,  was  appointed  to  succeed 
him  in  1672.  No  Governor  of  Canada  under  the  French  regime, 
made  so  many  enemies  as  the  great  Count,  yet  none  has  ever  won 
in  so  large  a  measure  the  confidence  and  admiration  of  the  col- 
onists. When  he  obtained,  as  a  reward  for  thirty  years  of  active 
military  service,  the  Governorship  of  New  France,  he  was  still  in 
the  prime  of  life;  for  he  had  received  his  first  commission  in  1637, 
when  a  lad  of  seventeen,  and  he  was  now  fifty-two  years  of  age. 
During  his  military  career  in  Europe  he  had  risen  to  the  rank  of 
field  officer,  and  fought  in  Flanders,  Germany  and  Italy.  His 
last  campaign  was  in  Crete,  v^'hich  he  was  unable  to  save  from 
falling  into  the  hands  of  the  Turk.  Three  years  afterwards,  trans- 
ported to  the  Western  World,  he  was  devising  schemes  to  frus- 
trate a  very  dilferent  but  no  less  wily  foe,  the  Iroquois ;  and  his 
genius  is  conspicuous  in  the  versatility  with  which  he  could 
abandon  the  military  lessons  of  a  lifetime  and  adapt  himself  to 
the  wholly  dissimilar  conditions  of  Indian  warfare.  But 
though  he  left  his  tactics  behind  him  when  he  came  to  Canada, 
he  did  not  leave  his  personal  characteristics,  one  of  which  was 
an  arbitrary  and  violent  temper,  which  the  habit  of  military 
command  and  the  sufferings  and  vicissitudes  of  a  soldier's  life 
had  not  done  anything  to  soften.  Such  a  temper,  it  need  hardly 
be  said,  was  not  likely  to  aid  him  in  the  delicate  task  which 
had  proved  to  be  beyond  the  capacity  of  his  predecessors,  of 
maintaining  a   just   equilibrium  between  the  civil  and  the  eccles- 


394  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

iastical  power.  The  Intendant,  Talon,  was  still  in  office  when 
Fronrenac  arrived  in  1672;  l)ut  as  he  left  soon  afterwards, 
Frontenac  found  himself  in  undisputed  control  of  both  civil 
and  military  affairs,  saving  the  possil)le  interference  of  the 
Court.  The  colony  was  so  near  bankruptcy  that  no  one  but  a 
trained  economist  endowed  with  independent  control,  could  have 
rescued  it,  or  have  reconciled  the  interests  of  the  West  India  Com- 
pany with  the  prosperity  of  the  people  and  the  welfare  of  the 
State.  L)Ut  if  camp  life  had  not  made  of  Frontenac  a  statesman 
or  financier,  it  did  train  him  to  become  the  saviour  of  Canada  at  a 
crisis  in  her  history  when  absolute  confidence  in  his  own  judg- 
ment and  unshaken  courage  in  carrying  out  his  policy  were  need- 
ed to  impress  on  the  enemies  of  France  in  America,  both  savage 
and  civilized,  respect  for  her  military  strength,  and  to  infuse  into 
the  disheartened  colonists  a  spirit  of  nationality  and  an  ardor  for 
territorial  expansion. 

He  conducted  no  important  campaign  against  the  English  or 
the  Iroquois  during  his  first  administration,  yet  by  the  force  of  his 
character,  by  his  natural  gift  of  oratory,  supplemented  by  pictur- 
esque and  significant  gesture — language,  he  so  impressed  the  Iro- 
quois, during  the  great  peace  conference  at  Montreal  in  1680, 
with  awe  and  respect  that  they  refrained  from  any  overt  act  of 
barbarity  till  after  his  recall  in  1682.  His  removal  was  due  to  ir- 
ritation at  \'ersailles  over  the  constant  friction  between  himself 
and  the  Bishop,  with  whom  the  Intendant,  Duchesneau,  generally 
sided.  Talon  had  sailed  away  after  Courcelle,  and  Frontenac  was 
unhampered  by  any  civil  colleague  for  three  years.  During  this 
period  Bishop  Laval  was  absent  in  France,  to  secure  the 
erection  of  his  episcopal  charge  into  an  independent  diocese,  and 
his  own  appointment  as  Bishop  of  Quebec.  In  his  absence  his 
functions, civil  and  ecclesiastical,  were  committed  to  MM.  Dudouyt 
and  de  Bernieres,  as  vicars  apostolic,  who  did  their  best  to  main- 
tain the  asserted  rights  of  the  Church  against  infringement  by  the 
Governor.  But  it  was  not  till  Laval  himself  returned  as  Bishop  of 
Quebec  in  September,  1675,  after  an  absence  of  nearly  four  years, 
accompanied  by  a  new  Intendant,  Duchesneau,  who  had  been 
thoroughly  indoctrinated  with  the  idea  that  his  principal  duty  was 


FRONTENAC'S   SUCCESSORS.  395 

to  be  a  spy  and  a  check  on  the  Governor,  that  the  controversy  be- 
tween Church  and  State  was  supplemented  by  a  bitter  feud  be- 
tween the  Governor  and  his  civil  colleague.  This  at  leng-th  i^rew 
so  tiresome  to  the  King  and  so  detrimental  to  the  interests  of  the 
colony  that  both  Governor  and  Intendant  were  recalled  in 
1682,  and  a  poor  substitute  for  Frontenac  was  sent  out  in  the  jier- 
son  of  old  Mons.  Pierre  de  la  Barre,  while  Jacques  de  Meulles  re- 
placed Duchesneau.  The  chief  incident  in  Governor  de  la  Barre's 
administration  was  an  abortive  campaign  against  the  Iroquois — 
the  Senecas  being  the  special  objects  of  attack  on  account 
of  their  hostility  to  the  Illinois,  who,  mainly  through  the 
explorations  and  trading  operations  of  La  Salle,  had  Ix'come  allies 
of  the  French.  Then  a  treaty  was  made,  which  met  with  repro- 
bation in  the  colony  and  such  emphatic  disapproval  in  France 
that,  in  his  instructions  to  jNIarquis  Denonville,  de  la  Barre's  suc- 
cessor, the  King  regretfully  remarks  that  he  had  chosen  Mons.  de 
la  Barre  to  put  an  end  to  the  dissensions  between  the  Governor 
and  the  Intendant,  and  he  now  recalls  him  on  account  of  his  great 
age  and  the  shameful  peace  he  had  condescended  to  make  with 
the  Iroquois. 

Denonville  fared  worse  than  his  predecessor,  for  though  he 
gained  notable  advantages  over  the  Iroquois,  he  was  imal)le  to  de- 
fend the  colonv  against  the  measures  of  revenge  taken  l)y  the  foe 
upon  the  settlers  on  the  Richelieu  and  at  Montreal,  and  on  the 
Indian  allies  of  France.  Quebec  and  its  vicinity  did  not  suffer 
directly  from  these  Iroquois  attacks,  Imt  trade  and  all  internal 
progress  were  arrested,  and  the  colony  was  brought  to  the  very 
verge  of  ruin.  Even  the  fort  at  Cataraqui,  the  stronghold  which 
Frontenac  first  l)uilt,  and  which  La  Salle  rebuilt  and  main- 
tained, and  on  which  the  defen.se  of  the  West  .so  largely  depended, 
was  dismantled  and  abandoned. 

Meanwhile,  in  1685,  as  the  King  states  in  a  memorandum  to 
Mons.  de  Meulles,  seeing  that  Mons.  de  la  Barre  had  licen  unable 
to  settle  the  difficulty  with  Bishop  Laval  regarding  the  status 
and  remuneration  of  the  cures,  he  had  accepted  the  Bishop's  re- 
signation, and  appointed  the  Chevalier  Mons.  do  Saint  Vallier 
in  his  place. 


396  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

Frontenac's  chief  clerical  opponent,  having  thus  no  longer  a 
seat  in  the  Council,  and  the  place  of  his  incompatible  colleague, 
Duchesneau,  being  now  filled  by  Jean  Bochart  de  Champigny,  the 
way  was  open  for  sending  baciv  the  Count  to  Canada  as  the  one 
man  who  could  save  the  colony  by  his  personal  prowess  and  re- 
nown without  assistance  from  France — for  the  King  would  pro- 
mise nothing.  The  people  were  at  one  with  the  King  and  his  coun- 
cilors in  regarding  Frontenac  as  their  only  possible  deliverer,  and 
so  when  he  landed  in  Quebec  for  the  second  time,  in  October, 
1689,  though  there  was  no  parade  or  noisy  rejoicing — for  the  town 
was  too  dispirited  for  hilarity — he  was  greeted  with  what  was 
more  flattering  still  to  the  grand  old  veteran,  a  visible  resurrection 
of  hope  and  confidence  among  all  classes.  War,  famine,  pestilence 
and  poverty  had  chased  each  other  from  end  to  end  of  the  colony, 
and  now  all  were  to  be  banished  under  the  influence  of  the  mighty 
name  of  Frontenac. 

The  flight  of  James  IL  and  the  accession  to  the  throne  of  Will- 
iam and  j\Iary  had  produced  acute  changes  in  the  relation  of  the 
French  and  English  crowns  and  colonies.  De  Callieres,  Governor 
of  Montreal,  propounded  a  radical  plan  of  campaign  for  settling 
the  Iroquois  question,  namely,  to  conquer  Xew  York  ;  but,  before 
that  was  accomplished,  the  English  applied  the  same  radical  treat- 
ment to  the  Abenaki  question  by  attempting  to  capture  Quebec. 
Sir  William  Phips,  having  taken  Port  Royal  in  May,  1690,  ap- 
peared before  Quebec  on  October  16,  with  thirty-two  ships  and 
over  2,000  men.  The  news  of  his  approach  reached  Frontenac  in 
Montreal,  where  he  was  holding  a  pow-wow  and  giving  a  great 
feast  to  his  Western  Indian  allies.  He  was  winning  their  hearts  by 
dancing  their  dances  and  sharing  their  unpalatable  cookery; 
but  he  hurried  back  to  Quebec,  and  de  Callieres,  in  command  at 
Montreal,  followed  so  expeditiously  with  800  regular  and  irregular 
troops  that  he  arrived  only  two  days  after  his  commander,  his 
men  marching  down  the  Grand  Allee  in  such  high  spirits  that 
their  shouts  could  be  heard  on  the  hostile  ships.  That  same  day 
Phips  sent  his  peremptory  summons  to  Frontenac  to  surrender. 
He  had  imitated,  when  framing  it,  a  similar  document  sent  by 
Kirke  to  Champlain;  but  conditions  as  well  as  men  had  changed. 


THE  SECOND  SIEGE  OF  QUEBEC.  397 

Phips'  challeng-e  reads  like  burlesque  iu  the  light  uf  the  igno- 
minious failure  of  his  expedition.  Nevertheless,  in  defending  the 
town  in  its  hour  of  danger,  Frontenac  displayed  not  only  mili- 
tary skill,  but  great  fertility  of  resource.  We  read  that  when 
Sir  William  Phips'  messenger  was  led  blindfolded  \\\)  the 
steep  road  from  the  landing  into  the  tumble-down  Chateau, 
the  few  inhabitants  of  the  tovyn  jostled  the  poor  fellow  as  though 
they  had  been  a  multitude,  which  the  narrow  road  could  not 
contain.  The  handful  of  soldiers  meanwhile,  with  their  drum- 
mer and  trumpeter,  passed  and  repassed  before  and  behind 
the  blind,  bewildered  herald,  like  the  army  in  a  play 
where  men  march  and  countermarch  through  the  wings  of  a 
stage.  When  the  envoy  was  unbandaged  and  allowed  to  read  his 
message,  mercifully  offering  advantageous  terms  of  surrender,  he 
found  himself  in  a  room  of  the  old  Chateau  which  showed  no 
signs  of  being  a  tottering  building,  surrounded  by  a  crowd  of 
officers  m  their  best  uniforms,  who  confirmed  the  gallant  Mar- 
quis's haughty  reply  by  their  well-acted,  contemptuous  gestures. 
Frontenac  said  haughtily  that  he  did  not  need  the  hour  for  delib- 
eration offered  by  the  Admiral  of  the  rebel  King  William,  and  in- 
dignantly refused  to  send  any  other  reply  to  the  summons  to  sur- 
render than  shot  from  the  mouths  of  his  cannon. 

The  defences  of  Quebec  in  men  and  guns  were  vastly  greater 
that  when  Kirke  summoned  the  helpless  Champlain  to  surrender; 
for,  though  still  indifferently  protected  landwards,  the  town  was 
impregnable  from  the  river,  and  it  was  on  that  side  that  the  only 
vigorous  attack  was  made.  Phips  made  a  fruitless  attempt 
as  Wolfe  subsequently  did,  to  advance  on  the  town  from 
the  Beauport  Flats.  Failing,  he  used  his  broadsides;  but  the 
bombardment  of  the  town  from  the  fleet  was  answered  by  a  better 
directed  fire  from  the  city  batteries.  With  some  ships  disabled 
Phips  gave  up  the  attempt,  and  returned,  to  suffer  more  from  the 
elements  in  the  Gulf  than  from  the  fire  of  the  Grand  Battery, 
fiis  tardiness  in  reaching  the  field  of  operation,  combined  with  the 
incongruous  elements  of  his  naval  and  land  forces,  made  failure 
almost  a  foregone  conclusion ;  nevertheless,  so  short  was  the  gar- 
rison of  provisions  that  the  addition  of  dc  Callieres'  forces  to  the 


398        QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

poverty-stricken  and  hungry  town  would  have  made  surrender 
inevitable,  had  Phips  known  the  true  state  of  Frontenac's  com- 
mand and  been  bold,  or  rather  rash,  enough  to  run  the  risk  of 
November  storms  in  the  Gulf. 

Mons.  Saint  Vallier  was  building  at  the  time  a  little  church 
in  the  Lower  Town,  on  the  site  of  the  old  Company's  store, 
and  this  he  dedicated  to  Notre  Dame  de  la  Victoire.  The 
first  Sunday  after  the  22nd  of  October  of  each  year  is  still  ob- 
served as  a  feast  day  in  commemoration  of  the  victory.  The  same 
unpretentious  little  chapel  was  re-dedicated  to  the  Virgin  twenty- 
two  years  afterwards,  in  recognition  of  her  intervention  in  wreck-, 
ing  Admiral  Hovenden  Walker's  fleet  in  the  Gulf ;  and  it  has  since 
been  known  as  Notre  Dame  des  Vict  aires,  the  plural  form  repre- 
senting her  two  interventions  on  behalf  of  the  pious  town  which 
had  always  been  particularly  devoted  to  the  worship  of  the  Holy 
Family.  The  Quebec  clergy  were  willing  to  attribute  the  whole 
credit  of  Phips'— as  they  were  subseciuently  of  Walker's — defeat 
to  divine  aid.* 

The  brilliant  defence  was  soon  known  to  the  uttermost  parts 
of  New  France,  nor  was  it  long  before  the  defeat  of  the  attacking 
fleet  and  army  was  reported  and  bemoaned  in  the  villages  and 
towns  of  the  English  colonies.  A  medal  was  struck  by  the 
French  government  in  commemoration  of  the  victory,  but 
no  adequate  forces  were  sent  to  Canada  to  protect  her  in 
future.  The  exploit  raised  the  renown  of  the  Governor  among 
white  men  and  red,  and  restrained  New  England  from  making 
any  further  attempt  to  capture  Canada's  stronghold  during  Fron- 
tenac's life.  Louis  XIV.  was  slow  in  recognizing  his  debt  to  the 
Count,  even  to  the  extent  of  conferring  on  him  the  Cross  of  St. 
Louis.  He  declined  to  make  him  a  lieutenant-general,  but  allowed 
him  a  gratuity  of  6,000  livres   for  his  chaplain,   secretary  and 

*  The  English,  after  the  final  capture  of  Quebec,  were  less  humble,  for  in  a 
sermon  preached  by  Samuel  Cooper  before  Governor  Pownall  and  the  Massa- 
chusetts Council  and  House  of  Representatives,  the  reverend  gentleman  allows 
Divine  Providence  only  a  share,  as  co-operating  with  the  British  navy,  in  the 
honor  of  the  final  victory.  To  quote  the  speaker's  own  words — "These  con- 
quests, great  as  they  have  been,  are  owing  to  the  favor  of  that  Being,  who  is 
the  sole  monarch  of  the  ocean,  where  even  the  British  navy  cannot  triumph  with- 
out the  aid  of  His  providence." 


Notre  Dame  des  Victoires,  from  Richard  Short's  drawings,  1759. 


Notre  Dame  des  Victoires,  with  adjacent  house,  as  restored  and  standing  today. 


LIFE  AT  THE  CHATEAU  ST.  LOUIS.  399 

surgeon.  Phips'  challenge  and  defeat'  aggravated  the  rancor- 
ous feeling  between  the  neighboring  French  and  English  colonies, 
rendering  more  vicious  the  border  raids  in  which  Christian  men 
on  both  sides  enlisted  the  services  of  th.e  Indians,  and  thus  made 
themselves  responsible  for  the  abominations  and  barbarities  of 
savage  warfare.  Happily,  before  Frontenac  passed  awav  in  the 
autumn  of  1698,  there  was  a  lull  in  this  hateful  strife  consequent 
upon  the  establishment  of  peace  between  France  and  England; 
and  one  of  his  last  public  acts  was  to  entertain  at  dinner  in  the  old 
Chateau  John  Schuyler,  of  Albany,  who  had  come,  on  the  procla- 
mation of  the  Peace  of  Ryswick,  to  negotiate  for  an  exchange  of 
prisoners. 

The  defeat  of  Phips  was  the  only  heroic  incident  in  an  ir- 
ritating, ignominious  border  warfare.  It  was,  however,  not  only 
the  constant  terror  to  which  the  frontier  settlements  of  Massachu- 
setts were  exposed,  but  alarm  at  the  far-reaching  schemes  which 
Frontenac  had  formed  to  hem  the  English  colonies  within  a  circle 
of  French  forts,  stretching  from  the  mouth  of  the  St.  Lawrence 
to  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi,  that  goaded  the  New  England 
colony  to  desperation,  and  inspired  the  attempt  to  extinguish  at 
one  blow  French  power  on  the  Continent. 

Turning  now  from  deeds  of  warfare  to  the  social  life  of  the 
colony,  it  is  impossible  not  to  regret  that  Frontenac  was  not  ac- 
companied to  Canada  by  his  brilliant  Countess.  Her  womanly 
tact,  it  is  safe  to  say,  would  have  kept  him  out  of  many  difficulties 
into  which  he  rashly  ran.  The  Chateau  under  the  Old  Regime 
famous  though  it  was  through  the  men  who,  in  peace  and  in  war, 
had  held  council  within  its  walls,  had  seldom  been  the  scene  of 
such  social  hospitalities  as  women  alone  can  devise  and  conduct. 

Life  in  the  Old  Fort  was  modest  and  simple  enough  in  Cham- 
plain's  time,  and  conducted  with  almost  monastic  severity,  especi- 
ally during  his  later  years,  when  his  Jesuit  advisers  had  an  un- 
disputed ascendancy.  There  was  one  short  interval  when  his 
young  wife  shed  a  little  brightness  over  its  scanty  accommoda- 
tions. Governor  Montmagny,  during  his  long  rule,  carried 
out  strictly  and  faithfully  his  vows  of  celibacy,  and  as  the  black 
robes  were  very  intimate  at  the  Chateau  his  suite  must  have  been 


400  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

compelled  to  observe  a  like  restraint,  and  women  must  have  found 
its  atmosphere  uncongenial.  Madame  d'Aillebout,  who  was  mis- 
tress twice,  was,  though  devout,  a  fascinating  woman,  and  won 
men's  hearts,  as  well  as  their  respect,  long  after  her  austere  hus- 
band had  gone  to  his  well-deserved  reward.  The  Chateau  was  cer- 
tainly not  the  scene  of  much  public  revelry  during  its  occupation  by 
the  three  Governors  who,  after  de  Lauzon,  successively  represent- 
ed the  Company  of  the  One  Hundred  Associates.  None  of  them 
were  accompanied  by  their  wives.  All  were  in  conflict  with 
the  Bishop,  and  none  therefore — publicly  at  least — dare 
aggravate  their  sins  by  encouraging  such  gaiety  as  a  public  ball. 
In  the  early  days  fireworks  and  plays  were  exhibited  at  the  fort 
to  amuse  the  Indians  and  instruct  the  people,  for  the  Jesuits  had 
none  of  the  Puritan  scruples  against  theatrical  performances, 
which  were  given  in  their  College  by  their  pupils  on  special  occa- 
sions, and  as  part  of  the  annual  closing  exercises ;  but  they  had  all 
John  Wesley's  aversion  to  dancing,  or  to  amusements  which 
brought  the  sexes  into  too  close  proximity. 

On  the  assumption  by  the  King  of  actual  rule  over  the  Colony 
in  1663  and  the  arrival  of  the  Carignan-Salieres  Regiment 
to  give  eclat  to  the  King's  viceroy,  de  Tracy,  who  landed  with  be- 
fitting dignity  from  a  fleet  of  ships,  everything  changed,  and  with 
it  the  strict  rule  of  the  early  Jesuit  period.  Though  the  Bishop 
was  not  a  lover  of  pleasure,  and  the  clergy  of  the  Quebec  Diocese 
were  then,  as  they  have  ever  since  been,  strict  disciplinarians,  en- 
forcing a  rigid  code  of  morality,  they  did  not  restrict  their  flocks 
in  the  enjoyment  of  innocent  amusements.  It  was  different  at 
Montreal.  The  gay  Baron  Lahontan  complained  bitterly,  when 
stationed  with  his  regiment  there,  of  the  strict  surveillance  which 
the  Reverend  Seigneurs,  the  priests  of  St.  Sulpice,  maintained. 
They  not  only  forbade  all  dancing,  gambling  and  masquerading, 
but  took  noble  ladies  to  task,  and  deprived  them  of  the  sacrament, 
because  they  dressed  in  gayer  colors  than  the  sombre  priests  ap- 
proved ;  and  they  never  hesitated  to  upbraid  the  culprits  from  the 
pulpit,  a  habit  which  got  them  into  trouble  when  the  Abbe  Fenelon 
went  so  far  as  to  criticise  Frontenac  himself  in  one  of  his  sermons. 
They  were  also   extremely  particular  as   to  what  they   allowed 


MORAL  DECLENSION.  4OI 

their  flock  to  read.  This  probably  was  a  restriction  of  personal 
liberty  little  objected  to  by  a  community  kept  ever  on  the  watch 
for  the  Iroquois  and  not  much  given  to  literature.  The  French 
officers,  however,  were  not  over  devout,  and  the  books  which  they 
brought  with  them  and  allowed  to  lie  about  their  quarters,  alarm- 
ed and  scandalized  the  good  Fathers  in  a  shocking  degree.  The 
Cure  in  the  Baron's  absence  saw  fit  to  ransack  his  room  and  found 
a  copy  of  the  works  of  Petronius,  which,  being  a  perfect  edi- 
tion, the  Baron  particularly  valued.  But  it  remained  perfect  no 
longer,  as  the  angry  cure  tore  out  a  number  of  objectionable 
leaves.  The  Baron,  on  discovering  the  mutilation,  swore  he  would 
tear  as  many  hairs  out  of  the  priest's  beard  as  the  priest  had  torn 
leaves  from  his  book.  His  indignation,  however,  finally  yielded  to 
the  entreaties  of  his  landlord  not  to  get  him  into  trouble  by  such 
a  mode  of  resenting  the  injury.  From  Montreal  the  Baron  was 
removed  to  Boucherville,  where,  the  cure  being  more  tolerant,  he 
enjoyed  himself  in  a  round  of  parties  and  picnics.  Of  the  Quebec 
secular  clergy  he  has  only  kind  words  to  say ;  he  admits  and 
appreciates  the  self-denial  of  these  poor  priests  who  contented 
themselves  with  the  bare  necessities  of  life,  and  applauds  the 
good  sense  with  which  they  refrained  from  meddling  wnth 
matters  outside  their  province. 

It  is  to  be  feared,  however,  that  the  lenient  rule  of  the  Quebec 
clergy  was  taken  advantage  of  by  their  parishioners,  for  Bishop 
Laval,  in  1682,  w'as  obliged  to  reprove  the  women  for  not  only 
coming  to  church,  but  taking  the  sacrament  and  distributing  pain 
henit,  with  bare  arms  and  low-neck  dresses  and  uncovered 
heads.  The  abuse  had  grown  to  such  a  pass  that  he  was  com- 
pelled to  forbid  the  priests  administering  the  sacrament  to  women 
thus  underclad.  The  excesses  or  deficiencies  in  dress  w^ere  per- 
haps a  symptom  of  a  social  condition  requiring  great  watchful- 
ness on  the  part  of  the  clergy,  for  we  find  the  Bishop  threatening 
to  excommunicate  all  who  took  part  in  a  charivari,  a  noisv  mode 
of  expressing  popular  disapproval  of  unsuitable  marriages  which 
has  survived  to  our  own  day.  But  a  few  years  later  still  worse 
demoralization  threatened  the  pious  town,  fnr  Frontenac.  besides 
giving  a  public  ball  at  the  Chateau  in  the  winter  of  1694.  went 


402  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

SO  far  as  to  propose  that  Aloliere's  "Tartuffe"  should  be  per- 
formed. 

The  Jesuits  had  patronized  by  their  presence  serious  tragedies, 
such  as  CorneiUe's  "Herachus"  and  "The  Cid,"  but  they  had  dis- 
approved absohitely  of  a  ballet  given  at  the  Company's  store  in 
1647,  which  a  certain  "petite  Marsolet,"  a  pupil  of  the  Ursulines, 
had  attended  in  defiance  of  their  commands.  When  Fron- 
tenac  enlisted  the  dramatic  talent  of  the  garrison  in  the  per- 
formance of  Racine's  "Mithridate,"  no  protest  was  made;  but 
when  he  proposed  playing  "Tartuiife,"  and  assigned  the  manage- 
ment to  a  certain  Lieutenant  Mareul,  a  gentleman,  who.  though 
only  a  year  in  the  colony,  had  already  become  notorious  for  his 
gallantry,  his  old  friend.  Bishop  Saint  Vallier,  loudly  protested.  It 
is  assumed  as  true  by  the  Abbe  Ferland  that  Frontenac  suggested 
that  it  would  do  the  religious  ladies  and  their  scholars  good  to 
see  a  certain  phase  of  life  depicted  in  its  true  colors.  If  there  is 
any  truth  in  the  story,  Frontenac  must  have  intended  it  for  a  joke, 
in  the  same  spirit  as  that  in  which  he  met  the  Bishop  when  he 
accepted  100  pistoles  from  the  fat  purse  of  the  wealthy  prelate  in 
consideration  of  withdrawing  the  piece.  The  Bishop  did  not  see 
the  joke.  The  Governor  kept  his  promise ;  but  the  Bishop,  to  en- 
sure the  fulfilment  of  the  pact,  thundered  mandcnients  against 
stich  irreligious  plays,  and  included  Mareul  himself  by  name  as 
"an  impious  creature,  who  even  in  public  talks  in  a  manner  which 
should  make  the  very  heavens  blush  and  call  down  the  vengeance 
of  God."  "Tartuffe"  contains  some  expressions  that  verge  on  the 
indelicate  and  which  might  be  omitted  without  injuring  the  play ; 
but  no  pruning  could  conceal  the  fact  that  the  motive  of  the 
whole  comedy  is  a  satire  against  religious  hypocrisy. 

Tartuffe  was  a  lay,  not  a  clerical,  hypocrite,  and  the  play 
was  aimed  against  the  Illuminati  and  their  courtly  advocate,  Des- 
marets.  So  clearly  was  this  recognized  at  the  time  of  its  first 
presentation  that  it  met,  according  to  Michelet,  with  the  approval 
of  the  papal  legate  himself ;  but  none  the  less  its  application  to 
hypocrites  in  general  has  made  it  popular  with  every  generation, 
and  odious  to  certain  classes.  Neither  Laval  nor  Saint  Vallier  had 
the  least  reason  to  fear  a  personal  reference,  but  the  wealthy  Jes- 


A  THREATENED  PERFORMANCE  OF  "tARTUFFE."  403 

uits,  accused,  whether  justly  or  not,  of  augmenting  the  already 
great  wealth  of  the  Society,  by  engaging  in  trade  under  the  guise 
of  mission  work,  might  well  dread  to  see  the  comedy  performed. 
Whether  Bishop  Saint  Vallier  loved  the  Jesuits  or  not,  he  dare  not 
allow  any  body  of  clergy  to  be  exposed  to  ridicule.  The  Bishop 
therefore  threw  himself  impetuously  into  the  fray  against  the 
play,  against  the  Governor  who  had  suggested  it,  and  against  the 
officers  who  were  to  act  in  it,  thus  alienating  his  best  friend,  the 
Governor,  and  antagonizing  the  army.  He  even  induced  the 
Sovereign  Council  to  arrest  Mareul  for  blasphemy,  and  kept  him 
in  prison  until  Frontenac  almost  by  force  procured  his  release.* 

*  The  quarrel  between  Bishop  Saint  Vallier  and  Frontenac  over  Tartitffe 
was  a  repetition  of  a  somewhat  similar  feud  between  Bishop  Laval  and  the  In- 
tendant  Talon,  growing  out  of  a  ball  given  by  M.  Chartier  de  Lotbinicre  in  1667. 
The  brotherhood  (confrerie)  of  the  Holy  Family  in  Canada  originated  with  the 
Jesuit  Father  Chaumont.  He  had,  to  use  his  own  words,  "conceived  for  fourteen 
years  or  more  the  ardent  desire  that  the  Divine  Mary  should  have  a  large  number 
of  spiritual  children  by  adoption  to  console  her  for  the  suffering  she  underwent 
through  the  loss  of  her  Jesus.  Once  when  I  was  smitten  by  this  ardent  desire  to 
obtain  for  thf^  Virgin  Mother  this  saintly  and  numerous  posterity,  I  suddenly 
heard  distinctly  in  the  depth  of  my  soul  these  words,  which  appealed  to  my  heart: 
'  You  will  be  my  spouse,  since  you  desire  to  make  me  the  mother  of  so  many 
children.'  Filled  with  shame  and  confusion,  in  that  the  Mother  of  God  should 
think  of  doing  me  such  an  honor,  I  was  abased  by  the  consideration  of  my 
nothingness,  my  sins  and  my  wretchedness.  Nevertheless,  she  told  me  that  she 
was  my  spouse."  Thus  originated  in  Canada,  the  brotherhood  of  the  Holy 
Family,  which  Bishop  Laval  favored,  for  the  creation  of  which  he  obtained  bulls 
from  Alexander  VIL,  for  the  guidance  of  whose  members  he  laid  down  wise  and 
stimulating  rules  intended  to  assist  them  in  imitating  the  life  of  the  Holy  Family. 
As  the  women  members  were  urged  to  ask  themselves  on  every  critical  occasion, 
"  How  would  the  Holy  Virgin  have  acted  under  these  circumstances  ?  Would 
she  have  done  this .''  Would  she  have  spoken  thus?  Would  she  have  dressed 
in  this  fashion  ?"  and  as  they  promised  to  abstain  from  frivolities  in  which  the 
Holy  Virgni  would  not  have  engaged,  the  range  of  gayeties  in  which  they  might 
participate  was  limited.  Some  of  the  ladies,  who,  in  their  enthusiasm,  had  joined 
the  fraternity,  yielding  to  more  worldly  impulses,  went  to  M.  Chartier's  ball,  for 
which  they  were  gravely  reproved  by  the  Bishop  and  the  priests  of  the  Semi- 
nary, who  were  the  spiritual  managers  of  the  fraternity.  It  would  seem  to  have 
been  quite  within  the  province  of  the  Bishop  and  tiie  clergy  to  reprimand 
dehnquents  for  disobedience  of  the  rules  of  the  fraternity  and  neglect  of  their 
purely  religious  duties,  and  even  to  suspend  the  members  of  the  confrerie.  But 
the  Intendant  Talon  regarded  the  Bishop's  action  as  an  infrigenient  of  the  social 
liberty  of  the  citi-en,  and  as  a  reflection  on  the  character  of  the  entertainment. 
He  therefore  brought  the  matter  before  the  Council,  and  a  committee  was  ap- 
pointed to  investigate.  The  Committee  reported  that  the  Carnival  entertainment 
had  been  harmless,  and  the  subject  was  then  dropped  in  the  Council;  but  not 
by  society  in  the  little  town,  where  the  secrecy  of  the  fraternity's  meetings  gave 
scope  for  abundant  scandalous  rumor.  The  whole  incident  affords  a  curious 
example  of  the  e-^tremes  to  which  the  leaders  of  the  Church  and  State  will  go 
when  looking  for  causes  of  offense  and  excuses  for  a  quarrel. 


404  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

The  presence  of  the  mihtary  had,  in  the  long  run,  a  demoral- 
izing effect  on  society,  though,  if  we  are  to  credit  the  Jesuit  narra- 
tive, when  the  Carignan-Salieres  Regiment  first  came  out  there 
was  a  veritable  revival  of  religion  in  the  ranks.  Talon  writes  to 
the  King  that  he,  Mons.  de  Tracy,  and  Courcelle  had  assisted  at 
the  abjuration  of  his  heresy  by  a  certain  Captain  Berthier  of  the 
regiment,  at  the  hands  of  the  Bishop,  and  that  sixteen  soldiers  had 
within  a  month  been  converted.  The  effect  was  not  in  all  cases 
evanescent,  for  a  certain  Captain  Petit  subsequently  took  holy  or- 
ders. Mons.  Laval,  writing  to  the  Propaganda,  names  twenty- 
two  who  had  abjured  their  heresy  in  the  year  1665,  and  states  that 
at  least  thirty-three  of  the  soldiers  who  had  landed  with  typhoid 
fever,  and  had  been  treated  at  the  Hotel  Dieu,  had  done  likewise. 
Many  of  the  Catholics  had  never  been  confirmed,  and  the  famous 
regiment  had  evidently  enrolled  in  its  ranks  not  a  few  Huguenots. 
The  poor  fellows  landed  from  the  pest  ships  were  not  only  met 
with  kind  nursing  from  the  nuns,  but  found  themselves  in  a  re- 
ligious atmosphere  such  as  they  had  never  before  breathed. 

Of  course,  this  paroxysm  of  piety  passed  like  most  revivals, 
and  the  ways  of  the  world  which  the  soldiers  introduced  became  a 
source  of  great  alarm  and  anxiety  to  the  priests.  Some  of  the 
officers  engaged  in  trade,  and  the  men  drank ;  and  neither  officers 
nor  men  had  any  scruples  in  treating  the  Indians,  whether  to 
assist  a  bargain  or  from  sheer  good  fellowship.  And  that  old  sol- 
dier, Frontenac,  though  a  good  Catholic  and  a  strict  attendant  at 
mass — not  however  at  the  Cathedral,  but  across  the  Place  d'Armes 
at  the  Chapel  of  the  Recollets — one  who  conducted  household 
prayers  himself  every  evening  and  went  into  retreat  every  year, 
adhered  to  the  old  tradition  that  dancing  was  the  best  training 
for  good  marching,  and  that  the  soldier  was  entitled  to  more  than 
ordinary  license,  as  a  compensation  for  the  greater  risks  of  his 
profession.  The  calm  old  Chateau,  therefore,  during  his  two 
terms  of  office  was  the  scene  of  more  gaiety  than  it  had  ever  been 
before. 

With  a  temper  so  impetuous  and  methods  of  government  so 
arbitrary,  it  was  inevitable  that  Frontenac  should  make  enemies; 
but  it  was  unfortunate  for  his  reputation  that  lie  quarrelled  so  bit- 


SOCIAL   FOLT.TES.  4O5 

terly  with  the  higher  Church  authorities,  and  that  he  tried  to 
pit  one  rehgious  hody  against  another.  It  was  unfortunate, 
too,  that  his  friends  were  the  comparatively  iUiterate  Re- 
collets,  and  his  enemies  the  astute  and  highly  educated  Jesuits. 
The  result  was  tiiat  he  had  no  literary  defenders,  and  that  con- 
sequently there  has  been  handed  down,  and  received  as  true, 
a  whole  budget  of  derogatory  stories,  affecting  not  only 
his  own  but  his  wife's  good  name.  She  was  the  beautiful,  dashing, 
and  eccentric  Anne  de  la  Grange,  one  of  the  Lieutenants  and 
Marcchalc  dc  Camp  of  the  Grande  Mademoiselle,  when  she 
made  her  triumphant  entry  into  Orleans  during  the  war 
of  the  P'ronde.  A  woman  so  conspicuous,  and  of  so  marked  a 
character,  was  sure  to  be  talked  about,  and  notoriety  at  the  Court 
of  Louis  XIV.  was  hardly  compatil^le,  in  the  case  of  a  woman, 
with  unblemished  repute.  Saint  Simon,  the  amusing  gossip- 
monger  of  that  generation,  seems  to  have  disliked  Frontenac.  He 
always  mentions  him  with  disparagement,  or  faint  praise,  and 
casts  insinuations  and  shadows  of  suspicion  over  the  character 
and  actions  of  his  brilliant  Countess.  Calumny  even  followed  his 
mortal  remains,  for  the  unauthenticated  and  improbable  talc  is 
repeated  by  standard  historians  to-day  of  how  Frontenac.  upon  liis 
deathbed,  gave  instructions  that  his  heart  should  be  sent  in  a  silver 
casket  to  his  wife,  and  how  she  indignantly  declined  to  receive  it 
on  the  ground  that  in  life  it  had  never  been  hers. 
y  Social  manners  certainly  became  freer  during  Frontenac's  ad- 
ministration and  they  declined  rapidly  afterwards.  Bishop  Saint 
Vallicr,  on  his  way  to  Montreal,  in  1694,  was  shocked  by  gossip 
about  the  intimate  friendship  of  an  officer  with  a  married  lady  at 
Batiscan,  and  a  quarrel  in  which  a  lady's  name  was  involved  gave 
rise  to  a  fatal  duel  in  the  streets  of  Quebec.  As  the  regulations 
of  the  army  forbade  officers  to  marry  without  leave,  lefthandecT 
marriages  were  common  ;  but  it  was  not  until  Governor  \^aud- 
reuil's  time  that  even  the  convents  were  invaded  by  the  prevalent 
levity.  Bishop  Saint  Vallicr  had  to  appeal  to  the  Council  to  use 
its  influence  to  induce  Governor  \'audreuil  not  to  enter  the  con- 
vent hiimself,  and  to  cease  giving  authority,  as  he  had  been  doing, 
to  all   sorts   of   persons   to   disturb   the    seclusion   of   the   nuns. 


3\e6  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY.  ^ 

Madame  de  Vaudreuil,  a  Canadian  girl  by  birth,  had  beeii 
elevated  by  her  marriage  to  the  rank  of  marchioness.  Through 
Denonville's  influence  she  had  obtained  the  post  of  under- 
governess  of  the  Royal  Family  at  Versailles.  When  she 
returned  to  Canada  she  brought  back  with  her  some  of  the  man- 
ners of  Versailles.  She  carried  her  head  so  high  as  to  be  the 
envy  of  her  sex,  and,  being  a  woman,  made  free  to  enter  with  her 
suite  the  nunneries  when  she  listed.  And  thus  the  evil  grew  until 
good  Bishop  Dosquet,  Saint  Vallier's  successor,  had  to  deplore  the 
fact  that  the  religious  ladies,  to  the  great  scandal  of  the  pious,  went 
so  far  as  to  attend  dinner  and  supper  parties  at  the  Chateau  and 
the  Intendant's  palace.  Kalm  himself  fifty  years  later  prints 
the  menu  of  an  excellent  dinner  given  him  at  the  convent  of  the 
Ursulines,  but  he  does  not  say  whether  the  religious  ladies  par- 
took of  it  with  him.  To  secure  peace  the  ecclesiastical  authorities 
had  to  yield  more  or  less  to  the  officers  of  State,  if  we  may  judge 
by  Bishop  Dosquet's  description  of  Bishop  Saint  Vallier's  attitude. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

A.rrival    of   Bishop    Laval    as    Bishop   of   Petraea   and 

Vicar  Apostolic,  and  the  Creation  of  a 

Parochial  Clergy. 

Before  the  capture  of  Quebec  by  Kirke  the  Recollet  Friars,  had 
by  dispensation,  performed  parochial  duties  in  the  absence  of  the 
secular  clergy.  After  its  restoration  the  Jesuits  alone,  as  we  have 
seen,  were  allowed  to  return,  and,  for  twenty-seven  years  they 
were  the  only  ecclesiastics  performing'  regular  parochial  functions 
in  the  colony.  There  came  out  with  Champlain  in  1634,  a  secular 
priest,  LeSueur  de  St.  Sauveur  by  name,  and  we  have  met  Mons. 
Gilles  Nicolet,  but  to  neither  of  them  seem  to  have  been  assigned 
any  stated  duties  until  1(139,  when  the  Ursuline  and  Jlospital 
nurses  arrived.  Quarters  were  assigned  to  the  Hospitalieres  in  the 
Company's  house  opposite  the  Fort,  but  as  the  rooms  were  un- 
furnished, and  their  bedding  was  still  on  board  the  ship,  the 
Abbe  Jean  LeSueur  busied  himself  in  making  them  as  comfortable 
as  possible,  gathering  boughs  and  sapin  branches  for  their  beds. 
Although  the  branches  were  found  to  be  full  of  caterpillars,  the 
kind  services  of  the  Abbe  were  appreciated,  and  the  nuns  made 
him  their  chaplain,  but  seemingly  not  their  father  confessor.  His 
devotion  perhaps  did  not  compare  favorably  with  that  of  the 
Jesuits,  for  we  find  that  Father  Menard  replaced  him  in  1641  as 
chaplain,  and  acted  as  confessor  for  three  years,  when  more  active 
duties  required  him  to  resign  his  post  in  favor  of  their  original 
spiritual  adviser.  M.  LeSueur  is  the  only  secular  jiriest  who 
occupied  a  prominent  position  in  these  early  days,  and  his  name  is 
perpetuated  in  that  of  the  suburb  of  St.  Sauveur. 

Subsequently    there    accompanied    M.    d'Aillebout    to    Canada 
M.  A^ignal,  another  secular  priest,  as  chaplain   and    father  con- 


408  QUEBEC   IX   THE  SEVEXTEEN'TH   CENTURY. 

fessor  to  the  Ursulines.  He  seems  to  have  been  a  quiet,  unas- 
suming man,  who  did  his  duty  unostentatiously  and  shunned  no- 
toriety. The  post  was  a  congenial  one,  and  he  retained  it  until 
removed  by  the  energetic  Father  Oueylus,  during  his  short  reign. 
Good  Father  Mgnal  subsequently  fell  a  victim  to  the  Iroquois. 

With  Bishop  Laval  there  came  out  in  1659  Jean  Torcapel  and 
Phillii^e  Pelerin  as  priests,  Henri  de  Bernieres,  a  "simple  tonsure," 
and  Charles  de  Lauson-Charny,  who  had  entered  holy  orders, 
and  of  whom  we  have  already  heard,  as  having  temporarily  held 
the  office  of  Governor  after  the  departure  of  his  Father,  M.  Jean 
de  Lauzon.  After  that  date  })arish  duties  in  and  about  Quebec 
were  discharged  by  secular  clergymen,  but  the  Jesuits  continued  to 
perform  them  at  Montreal  until  the  arrival  of  the  Sulpicians  in 

1657- 

Canada  was  favored  by  sharing  most  bountifully  in  the  fruits 
of  the  great  religious  revival  which  took  place  within  the  Church 
of  Rome  itself  in  the  seventeenth  century.  The  Ursulines  and 
the  Sisters  of  the  Congregation  as  teachers  of  the  young,  and  the 
Hospitalieres  (Xuns  of  St.  Augustine)  of  the  Hotel  Dieu,  as 
nurses,  filled  positions  which  the  impecunious  Company  and  the 
needy  colonists  could  not  possibly  have  supplied  by  paid  workers. 
The  example  thus  given  of  true  practical  Christianity,  appealed 
much  more  forcibly  to  the  poor  white  colonists,  and  the  still  more 
indigent  aborigines,  than  the  secluded  self-abnegation  of  the 
strictly  cloistered  orders  could  have  done.  Both  orders  were 
creations  of  the  Reformation  in  its  wider  sense.  \\^e  have  already 
mentioned  the  Recollets,  who  were  the  first  to  teach  and  to  prac- 
tice in  this  remote  field  and  in  the  hidden  recesses  of  the  continent, 
the  principles  of  the  Master  and  of  his  disciple,  the  gentle  Saint 
Francis.  As  to  the  Jesuits  who  succeeded  them  it  may  briefly 
be  said  that  they  exhibited  a  devotion  to  duty  coupled  with  a 
scorn  of  danger  and  of  death  itself  in  its  most  cruel  forms, 
which  has  compelled  the  admiration  of  those  even  who  least 
admire  their  system.  The  story  of  the  Missions  of  the  Jesuits 
in  the  seventeenth  century,  whether  in  the  West  or  in  the  East, 
must  be  allowed  to  offset  a  large  part  of  the  odium  which  has 
attached  to  the  Order  on  account  of  its  unhappy  tendency  to  blend 


THE   SULPICIANS   AT    MONTREAL.  469 

politics  with  religion.  Perhaps  their  CanacHan  missionary  annals 
express  more  truthfully  than  other  chapters  of  their  history  the 
real  purpose  and  intent  of  their  remarkahle  founders.  Neverthe- 
less, it  must  be  admitted  that  they  were  a  serious  burden  on  the 
infant  colon}-,  while  their  Rcatioiis  distracted  attention  in  France 
from  the  urgent  needs  of  the  French  emigrants,  fastening  it  ex- 
clusively on  the  needs  of  their  own  missionary  work  among  the 
aborigines. 

A  healthier,  if  less  historically  important,  outgrowth  of  the 
Reformation  than  the  Society  of  Jesus  was  the  Seminary  of  St. 
Stilpice,  in  Paris.  Here  we  tind  a  body  of  earnest  and  able  secular 
priests  choosing  as  their  leader  and  director  a  man  of  recog- 
nized saintliness  of  character,  M.  Olier,  and  pledging  themselves 
to  follow  his  principles  and  rule  of  life  without  severing  them- 
selves from  the  general  body  of  the  clergy,  like  the  Jesuits,  or 
taking  monastic  vows,  like  the  mendicant  orders.  M.  Olier 
was  a  contemporary  and  disciple  of  St.  Francis  de  Sales 
and  St.  Vincent  de  Paul,  and  while  animated  by  their  pity  for 
the  poor  and  helpless,  he  recognized  that,  if  Catholicism  was  to 
maintain  its  influence  over  the  educated  classes,  it  must  be  through 
a  highly  educated  clergy.  Becoming  the  Cure  of  the  large 
parish  of  St.  Sulpice,  he  gathered  around  him  in  the  busy  Fau- 
bourg of  St.  Germain  a  group  of  scholars  devoted  primarily  to 
educating  youths  aspiring  to  the  office  of  the  priesthood. 
At  one  time  he  longed  to  become  himself  a  missionary  to 
Canada,  but  though  unable  to  fulfill  this  wish,  he  was  from  the 
first  one  of  the  associates  of  the  Montreal  Company,  and  a  friend 
of  M.  de  Maisonneuve  and  Mademoiselle  Mance.  Accordingly, 
when  in  16^6  M.  de  Maisonneuve  saw  reason  to  fear  that  the 
Jesuits,  who  had  heretofore  fulfilled  all  the  clerical  functions  in 
Montreal,  might  not  be  able  to  spare  a  i)riest  much  longer,  he 
applied  to  M.  Olier  for  assistance.  There  is  in  the  complimentary 
reference  made  by  the  Montreal  Company  to  the  Jesuits,  and  in 
the  reciprocated  compliments  of  the  Jesuits,  a  thinly  disguised 
vein  of  jealousy.  Be  that  as  it  may,  M.  Olier  designated  four  of 
his  colleagues  who  were  willing  to  undertake  the  hardships  and 
risks  of  service  in  Canada.     One  of  these,  M.  de  Queylus,  it  was 


410  QUEBEC   IN    THE  SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

suggested,  should  be  consecrated  Bishop  before  leaving,  but 
failing  to  secure  this  position,  he  was  created  Grand  \icaire  by  the 
Archbishop  of  Rouen,  who  claimed  Episcopal  authority  over 
the  Canadian  Church.* 

That  the  Jesuits  did  not  frustrate  the  invasion  of  their  territory 
by  the  Sulpicians  as  they  had  so  successfully  done  in  the  case  of 
the  Recollets,  may  be  due,  as  Suite  suggests,  to  their  temporary 
discomfiture  in  France  through  the  attack  of  the  Jansenists  under 
Pascal.  Ultimately  the  Sulpicians  became  the  most  wealthy 
ecclesiastical  body  in  Canada,  for  in  1640  AI.  de  Lauson  trans- 
ferred to  Dauversiere  and  other  founders  of  the  ^Montreal  Com- 
pany, the  seignory  of  Alontreal,  and  in  1663  this  Company  dis- 
solved voluntarily  in  favor  of  the  Sulpicians.  These  ecclesiastics 
thus  became,  not  only  independent  and  self-supporting,  but, 
according  to  the  Swedish  traveller  and  writer,  Kalm,  able  to 
remit  to  their  Order  in  France. 

The  Jesuits  were  ultimately  expelled  from  Canada.  The  Re- 
collets  after  the  Conquest  retired ;  but  the  Sulpicians  have  lived 
through  revolutions  in  France,  through  changes  of  government  in 
Canada,  and  through  even  greater  changes  in  their  social  sur- 
roundings, and  still  retain  influence  both  in  the  Old  and  in  the 
New  World  through  the  consistency  of  their  lives  with  their 
religious  profession. 

Renan.  who  was  educated  by  the  Sulpicians  in  their  Seminaries 
at  Issy  and  Paris,  and  who  may  be  accepted  as  a  candid  witness, 
after  speaking  of  the  high  attainments  of  some  of  his  professors, 
adds:  "But  it  is  not  to  eminent  scholarship  that  the  teachers 
of  St.  Sidpice  attach  the  highest  value.  St.  Stilpice  is  above  all 
a  school  of  virtue.  It  is  chiefly  in  respect  to  virtue  that  St.  Sul- 
pice  is  a  renmant  of  the  past — a  fossil  two  hundred  years  old. 
Many  of  my  opinions  may  surprise  the  outside  world  because 
the}'  have  not  seen  what  I  have  seen.    At  St.  Sulpice  I  have  seen. 


*The  Arclibisliop  of  Rouen  was  also  primate  of  Normand}'.  The  eccle- 
siastical Province  of  Normandy  closely  corresponded  geographically  to  the 
lines  of  the  Duchy,  and  as  Brittany  owed  homage  to  the  Duke  of  the  Nor- 
mans, the  primate  of  Normandy  claimed  the  emigrants  from  Normandy  and 
Brittany   across  the  sea,  as  within  his  episcopal  province. 


A   HOTBED   or    MYSTICAL    PIETY.  4II 

coupled,  I  admit,  with  ver_\-  narrow  views,  the  perfection  of  good- 
ness, pohteness,  modesty  and  self-sacrifice.  There  is  enougii  vir- 
tue in  St.  Sulpice  to  govern  the  whole  world.  And  this  fact 
has  made  me  very  discriminating  in  my  appreciation  of  what  I 
have  seen  elsewhere.  A  future  generation  will  never  be  able  to 
realize  what  treasures,  devoted  to  the  advancement  of  the  welfare 
of  mankind,  are  stored  up  in  those  ancient  schools  of  silence, 
gravity  and  respect."  In  their  humility  the  Sulpicians  have  even 
refrained  from  attaching  their  names  to  their  writings.  Hence 
Dollier  de  Casson's  "History  of  Montreal"  can  only  be  assumed 
to  be  from  his  pen,  and  the  Abbe  Faillon's  "Histoire  de  la  Colonic 
Franqaise  en  Canada"  is  anonymous.  The  Sulpicians  are  rather 
a  community  than  an  order,  being  bound  together  by  obedience  to 
an  idea  and  by  unity  of  purpose  rather  than  by  rigid  vows.  This 
was  true  also  of  another  group  of  devotees  in  that  surging  period 
of  religious  revival — les  Filles  de  la  Congregation,'^'  to  whom 
Canada  owes  much. 

In  the  Hermitage  of  Caen,  under  M.  de  Bernieres,  there  was 
assembled  a  group  of  men  as  profoundly  imbued  with  the  spirit  of 
expansive  Christianity  as  the  Brethren  of  St.  Sulpice,  but  whose 
zeal  exhausted  itself  in  mystical  self-communing  rather  than  in  the 
practice  of  useful  duties.  The  bonds  created  by  the  mere  memory 
of  a  pious  founder  and  obedience  to  his  mystical  precepts,  were  too 
feeble  to  hold  together  his  followers  for  two  generations.  We  have 
met  with  M.de  Bernieres  as  married  to, and  yet  not  the  husband  of, 
Mme.  de  la  Peltrie,  and  seen  how  she  went  with  the  UrsuHne  Nuns 
to  Canada  while  he  remained  in  France  to  administer  the  finances 
of  the  institution. t  His  sister,  Gourdaine  de  Bernieres,  was  Supe- 
rioress of  the  Ursuline  Convent  at  Caen,  and  in  the  yard  of  the 
Nunnery  his  brother  built  a  hermitage  to  which  both  clerics  and 


*  "Les  Filles  de  la  Congregation,"  an  association  formed  by  Marguerite 
Bourgeois  in  Montreal,  was  composed  of  devoted  women  under  merely 
simple  vows  (voeux  simples)  in  distinction  to  "voeux  solennels."— Charle- 
voix II,  Page  95.  To-day  this  order  has  not  fewer  than  25,000  pupils. 
Bentzon  "Notes  de  Voyage,"  Page  I78. 

fGosselin,  in  his  Life  of  Laval,  supposes  the  marriage  not  to  have  taken 
place.     Vol.  I,  Page  79. 


412  QUEBEC   IX    THE   SE\-E.\TEEXTH    CENTURY. 

laymen  retired  for  spiritual  intercourse  and  solemn  communing. 
Like  Olier,  whose  book,  "Journee  Chretienne,"  has  become  for 
his  disciples  their  rule  of  life,  so  de  Bernieres  poured  out  his  soul 
and  his  conceptions  of  the  duties  and  destinies  of  man  in  a  treatise 
entitled  "Le  Chretien  luterieur,"  at  first  published  anonymously. 
As  it  savored  of  Quietism,  it  was  placed  on  the  Index  till  the  ob- 
jectionable passages   were  expunged. 

What  renders  the  Hermitage  a  spot  of  interest  to  us,  apart  from 
the  fact  that  M.  de  Bernieres  presided  over  it,  is  that  both  Bishop 
Laval  and  AI.  de  Mezy,  nominated  by  the  Bishop  himself,  as  suc- 
cessor to  d'Avaugour  in  the  Governorship  of  Canada,  as  well 
as  de  Bernieres'  brother,  who  was  subsecjuently  Grand  Vicaire 
to  the  Bishop,  were  its  inmates,  and  imbibed  their  religious  inspi- 
ration from  its  atmosphere.  Had  the  discipline  of  this  establish- 
ment been  as  rigid  as  that  imposed  by  Loyola  on  the  novices  of  the 
Society  of  Jesus,  and  had  de  Bernieres'  teaching  been  as  specific 
in  its  injunctions  as  the  "Letter  on  Obedience"  and  the  "Constitu- 
tions" of  the  great  Founder  of  Jesuitism,  two  prominent  members 
of  the  Society  could  hardly  in  after  life  have  opposed  one 
another  so  bitterly  as  Bishop  Laval  and  Governor  de  Mezy  did 
over  the  question  of  the  respective  provinces  of  Church  and  State, 

The  Canadian  Church  fortunately  had  drawn  its  priests  and 
nuns  from  sources  exceptionally  pure,  and  the  secular  clergy,  as 
time  went  on,  identified  themselves  intimately  and  disinterestedly 
with  the  domestic  and  social  life  of  the  people.  It  was  doubtless 
due  to  these  circumstances  that  the  interference  of  the  Church 
did  not  arouse  popular,  as  well  as  official,  resentment.  The 
quarrel  was  entirely  confined  to  the  higher  clergy  and  the 
chiefs  of  the  civil  government.  The  people,  in  the  days  of 
Jesuit  supremacy,  there  is  reason  to  believe,  fretted  imder  it, 
but  after  they  had  secured  secular  priests  and  cures,  they  left 
the  struggle  between  Church  and  State  to  those  who  were  more 
immediately  affected  by  the  result.  The  struggle  commenced  in 
earnest  with  the  arrival  in  Quebec  on  June  i6,  1659,  of  Francois 
de  I\Iontmorency-Laval  de  Montigny,  Vicaire  Aposfoliquc  and 
Bishop  of  Petraea  /'//  parfihus  infidcUiim. 

From  a  strictly  ecclesiastical  point  of  view  the  presence  of  a 


NEED   FOR   A   1! IS II OP   IN    CANADA.  4I3 

bishop  in  the  country  was  certainl}  much  required.  The  Jesuits 
were  energetic  enough  in  the  performance  of  their  clerical  func- 
tions in  Quebec  itself,  but  the  settlements  at  Beauport,  Beaupre, 
the  Island  of  Orleans  and  other  points  near  by,  whose  population 
in  1666  was  thrice  that  of  the  town,  and  at  an  earlier  date 
probably  proportionately  as  large,  had  to  be  content  with  their 
occasional  ministrations,  and  with  such  aid  and  comfort  as  they 
received  from  Messieurs  Le  Sueur  and  Nicolet.  When  Mons. 
de  Maisonneuve  was  in  France  in  1645  the  subject  of  a  Bishop 
for  Canada  was  mooted,  and  M.  Gauffon  (Suite  III,  page  139), 
an  associate  of  Mons.  Olier,  was  nominated,  but  died  before 
action  could  be  taken.  The  matter  was  not,  however,  allowed 
to  rest.  Anne  of  Austria,  according  to  Charlevoix,  is  said  to 
have  favored  the  Jesuit  Father  Le  Jeune  as  Bishop ;  and  at 
another  time  an  agitation  was  excited  in  favor  of  Father  Lale- 
mant,  bv  reason  of  his  eminence  in  the  order  to  which  Canada 
was  considered  to  owe  so  much.  But  the  rules  of  the  Society  for- 
bade his  accepting  a  Bishopric,  even  if  the  Pope  had  approved  of 
him. 

As  the  constitution  of  the  Church  required  that  every  com- 
munity must  be  under  some  Bishop,  Father  Vimont  in  1647  (Jour- 
nal des  Jesuites,  Aug.  15,  1653.  page  185),  after  consultation  with 
his  superiors  in  Rome,  obtained  from  the  Archbishop  of  Rouen  a 
patent  appointing  the  Superior  of  the  Jesuit  Mission  his  Vicaire 
General.  In  connection  with  this  arrangement  every  possible  pre- 
caution was  taken  for  the  protection  of  the  Society ;  yet  Charlevoix 
asserts  that  the  pretensions  of  that  prelate  to  exercise  authority 
over  the  Church  in  Canada  were  not  founded  on  a  valid  title,  and 
that  the  Bishops  of  Nantes  and  LaRochelle  held  better  claim  to 
the  privilege.  However  that  may  be,  as  long  as  it  was  a  Jesuit  on 
whom  power  was  conferred,  the  authority  of  the  Archbishop  of 
Rouen  was  never  questioned  ;  but  when  another  Archbishop  of 
Rouen  appointed  the  Abbe  Queylus  his  Grand  Vicaire  in  1657, 
giving  him  authority  over  even  the  Superior  of  the  Jesuits,  though 
the  Jesuits  submitted,  it  was  with  an  ill  grace,  and  trouble  speedily 
supervened.  M.  Dollier  de  Casson.  the  Sulpician  historian  of 
Montreal,,   admirably    describes    the    diplomatic    expressions    of 


414  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    LENTLKY, 

pleasure  with  which  the  Jesuit  Fathers  welcomed  the  Grand 
\'icaire,  and  tells  us  how  short-lived  was  the  truce.  Father  de 
Quen,  the  Superior  of  the  Jesuits,  recognized  the  Abbe's  authority 
at  first,  and  allowed  the  Jesuit  Father  Poncet  to  be  confirmed  b} 
him  as  Cure  of  Quebec.  But  when  Father  Poncet,  as  the  Abbe's 
appointee,  acted  without  authority  and  permission  of  his  Jesuit 
Superior,  Father  de  Quen,  exercising  his  authority  as  Superior, 
assigned  him  to  an  Iroquois  ^lission  and  appointed  Father  Pijart 
in  his  place. 

Father  Poncet  in  passing  through  Montreal  reported  to  the 
Abbe,  who  in  hot  haste  went  down  to  Quebec  and  assumed  the 
duties  of  Cure  himself.  After  this  there  was  at  best  an  armed 
peace  between  the  Abbe  and  the  Jesuits.  They  could  not  deny 
the  Archbishop's  authority  under  which  they  themselves  had 
served,  or  refuse  to  recognize  his  appointee,  but  they  freely  used 
their  right  of  criticism,  if  we  may  judge  from  the  frequent  refer- 
ences to  the  obnoxious  AI.  Queylus  in  the  Journal,  and  from  a 
letter  written  by  the  deposed  Father  Pijart  to  ]\I.  Lambert,  which 
came  indirectly  under  the  Abbe's  eye,  and  in  which  he  was  de- 
scribed with  true  theological  vigor  as  a  "worse  enemy  than  the 
Iroquois  themselves."  Irritated  beyond  endurance,  the  \"icar  Gen- 
eral used  the  vantage  ground  of  the  pulpit  in  his  own  parish 
church  from  which  to  attack  his  detractors.  Altogether  the  Abbe 
was  very  human  in  his  weaknesses,  and  his  anger  was  impolitic ; 
but  despite  his  irritable  temper  he  was  a  thoroughly  kind  man. 
He  flung  excommunications  against  some  of  his  parishoners.  who 
were  suspected  of  having  burned  a  neighbor's  house,  but  he  flung 
his  purse  and  gave  his  services  generously  to  the  needy.  His  fiery 
character  and  unbridled  speech  were  in  marked  contrast  with  the 
polite  demeanor  and  imperturbable  self-control  of  his  Jesuit  co- 
workers, who.  despite  the  bitter  feeling  expressed  in  their  private 
Journal,  refrained  from  questioning  his  authority  in  public,  and 
observed  a  discreet  silence  respecting  him  in  their  Relatinns. 

One  of  the  Abbe  Queylus'  first  acts  nf  hostility  was  to  serve 
a  summons  on  the  Jesuit  Fathers  to  vacate  their  presbytery,  or  else 
return  the  6,000  livres  which  the  City  had  contributed  towards  it 
on  the  express  condition  that  it  should  be  built  as  the  property 


THE   AliliK    QL'KVLUS    AND    THE    JESUITS.  415 

of  the  parish  church,  a  condition  with  which  they  had  not  com- 
plied, as  they  had  buik  it  as  their  own.  After  four  months  of 
deUberation  on  the  part  of  the  Governor,  and  of  warm  debate 
on  the  subject  by  the  people  and  their  ecclesiastical  guides,  the 
Abbe  was  adjudged  the  6,000  livres  for  his  presbytery.  Never- 
theless, whatever  rancor  the  Fathers  might  feel,  they  paid  their 
New  Year  calls  on  their  ecclesiastical  chief  who  had  fallen  sick  and 
could  not  return  them.  On  his  side,  when  the  Fete  Dieii  came 
round  he  co-operated  with  the  Jesuits  in  the  procession,  and  ac- 
cepted an  invitation  to  dine  at  the  Jesuits'  table  with  the  Governor. 
Still  they  were  always  on  the  alert  to  pick  a  flaw  in  the  Abbe'? 
conduct  or  in  his  logic,  and  he  was  not  a  man  to  deny  them  the 
opportunity. 

On  the  burning  question  of  the  sale  of  brandy  to  the  Indians 
(Journal,  IMarch  31,  1658,  page  233),  the  Abbe  at  first  took  the 
commercial  and  civil  view  of  the  question,  but  later  was  converted 
to  the  prohibition  and  ecclesiastical  side.  Instead  of  rejoicing 
and  giving  him  the  credit  of  sincere  conversion,  Father  de  Qucn 
chuckles  over  the  inconsistency  of  the  Aljbe,  who,  after  supporting 
the  trafific,  had  turned  round  and  preached  against  it.  even  pro- 
nouncing it  a  mortal  sin  to  give  brandy  to  a  savage,  on  the  ground 
that  he  never  drinks  except  to  get  drunk. 

The  Abbe  could  stand  their  silent  taunts  and  ill-disguised  con- 
tempt, but  when  they  produced  a  patent,  probably  from  the  Bishop 
of  Nantes  or  LaRochelle.  appointing  the  Superior  of  the  Jesuits 
Grand  Vicaire.  he  bowed  to  higher  authority,  and  left  Quebec 
for  INIontreal  in  company  with  the  Governor,  :\Tons.  d'Aille- 
bout,  and  his  wife.  Had  his  own  credentials  limited  his  ecclesias- 
tical control  to  Montreal  and  the  adjacent  districts  already  under 
the  rule  of  St.  Sulpice,  there  would  probably  not  have  been 
any  trouble,  but  it  was  not  in  human.  esi)ecially  Jesuit,  nature 
to  yield  to  his  assumption  of  government  over  a  territ(iry  which 
had  before  been  so  absolutely  under  their  own  spiritual  and 
political  control. 

The  Abbe  remained  witli  his  co-religionists  in  Montreal  for  a 
year.  Meanwhile,  in  1659,  Bishop  T.aval  arrived  to  take  episcopal 
charo-e  of  almost  the  whole  of  North  America.     The  dissensions 


4It>  QUEBEC   IN    THi£   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

among  tlie  clergy,  and  the  dominant  control  exerted  by  a  single 
order  of  regulars,  certainly  demanded  the  presence  without  delay 
of  an  ecclesiastical  chief,  and  of  a  body  of  secular  clergy  unat- 
tached to  any  order  or  community.  The  Abbe  had  either  a  pre- 
monition or  a  hint  of  the  attitude  the  Bishop  would  assume  in 
the  quarrel  between  himself  and  his  rivals,  for  he  came  to  Quebec 
on  August  7  on  his  way  to  France.  He  accepted  the  hospitality 
of  the  Fort,  and  is  mentioned  as  preaching  in  the  Chapel  of  the 
Hotel  Dieu,  but  not  in  his  own  old  church — now. the  Cathedral. 
On  the  eve  of  embarking  he  received  a  communication,  probably 
from  the  Archbishop  of  Rouen,  which  might  have  emboldened  him 
to  assert  his  claims  as  Grand  Vicar;  but  just  as  the  same  juncture, 
the  Bishop,  whatever  his  original  commission  may  have  been, 
received  a  letter,  giving  him  episcopal  jurisdiction  over  both  Mon- 
treal and  Quebec.  All  Mons.  Queylus  could  do  was  to  bow  and  re- 
tire from  the  Colony.  He  appears  twice  again  in  Canada,  but  for 
only  a  brief  span.  Nevertheless  he  continued  to  occupy  a  large 
space  in  Canada's  ecclesiastical  history,  as  the  representative  of  the 
Archbishop  of  Rouen's  claims  in  his  prolonged  and  bitter  contest 
for  the  episcopal  control  of  Canada.  Two  years  subsequently  to 
his  defeat  by  the  Bishop  he  returned  (August  3,  1661).  The 
Bishop  forbade  him  to  go  to  Montreal.  Though  he  set  the  order  at 
defiance,  his  resistance  was  short  lived,  as  he  was  opposing,  not 
only  the  Bishop,  but  the  King  himself.  He  sailed  away  in  October 
of  the  same  year,  to  the  serious  loss  of  the  Colony,  which  could  ill 
afTord  to  part  with  a  man  of  so  much  talent  and  stubborn  inde- 
pendence, whose  influence,  notwithstanding  that  he  was  himself 
an  ecclesiastic,  would  probably  have  tended  to  mitigate  the  exces- 
sive pretensions  of  ecclesiastical  authority.  He  returned  to  Mon- 
treal in  1668,  but  by  that  time  the  authority  of  the  Bishop  was 
unquestioned  in  matters  spiritual,  nor  did  he  attempt  to  op- 
pose it. 

Tf  the  Jesuits  could  not  under  the  Constitution  of  their 
Order  allow  a  member  to  accept  episcopal  dignity,  the  Society 
was  not  forbidden  to  exert  its  influence  in  favor  of  a  candidate ; 
and  in  the  selection  of  Frangois  de  Montmorency  Laval  de  Mon- 
tigny  as  Vicaire  Apostolique  of  Canada,  and  in  the  bestowal  on 


KishoD  Laval. 


LAVAL  SENT  OUT  AS  V^CAR  APOSTOLIC.  4I7 

him  of  the  title  of  Bishop  of  Petraeu  in  part ib us  iiifulclltiiii,  we  can 
recognize  the  guiding  hand  of  the  Society  of  Jesus,  which  was  as 
strongly  opposed  to  Gallicanisni  as  to  Protestantism  itself.  The 
Pope,  in  refusing  to  appoint  the  Abbe  Queylus,  who  was  the 
choice  of  the  French  clergy,  and  in  selecting  Laval,  acted,  as  he 
claimed,  independently,  but  his  preference  doubtless  coincided  with 
that  of  the  Society  of  Jesus. 

Difficulties  and  delays  innumerable  occurred  before  means 
could  be  devised  of  consecrating  the  Bishop  owing  to  the  opi)0- 
sition  of  the  Archbishop  of  Rouen  and  his  friends.  As  Cardinal 
Mazarin  was  at  least  luke-warm  in  support  of  his  candidature 
the  King's  consent  was  secured  through  the  influence  of 
the  Queen  mother.  Even  after  that  was  obtained,  all  the  in- 
genuity of  the  Papal  Nuncio,  Piccolomini,  was  needed  to  persuade 
the  Archbishop  of  Paris  to  permit  his  consecration  within  his 
diocese.  But,  once  consecrated,  and  strong  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  Papal  support,  Laval  was  prepared  for  any  foe  who 
might  challenge  him.  As  Vicairc  ApostoUque  he  considered 
himself  directly  answerable  to  no  one  but  the  Pope  of  Rome. 
His  own  principles  were  those  of  extreme  ultramontanism.  and 
are  well  expressed  by  Abbe  Gosselin,  the  delightful  biographer 
both  of  Laval  and  of  his  successor,  Saint- Vallier,  when  he  speaks 
of  the  true  Catholic  as  one  who  ''knows  well  that  the  Church 
to  which  he  has  the  happiness  of  belonging  is  a  society  immortal, 
infallible  and  perfectly  organized,  which  holds  its  mission  through 
Jesus  Christ  himself,  and  is  as  superior  to  the  State  as  the 
soul  excels  the  body ;  that  although  these  two  societies  ought 
to  remain  independent,  each  occupying  its  own  sphere,  yet  in- 
asmuch as  the  interests  of  the  one  surpass  those  oT  the  other,  as 
Heaven  is  higher  than  the  earth,  whenever  their  interests  clash, 
the  State  must  submit  to  the  Church."  Tn  older  communities  where 
these  sweeping  premises  are  sometimes  admitted  as  matter  of 
faith,  certain  precedents  and  rules  are  still  recognized  as  deter- 
mining the  relative  positions  of  ecclesiastical  and  state  officials, 
and  the  limits  of  ecclesiastical  interference.  But  in  Canadi 
the  Bishop  entered  on  his  office  resolved  to  construe  literally 
the  protestation  of  every  French  ruler,  from  Francis  T.  onward 


4l8  QUEBEC    IN    THE  SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

that  the  evangehzation  of  the  world  and  the  glory  of  God  were 
the  foremost  motives  of  all  colonizing  schemes.  In  that  new  land 
where  there  were  no  heretics,  and  where  such  weeds  as  Jansenism 
and  Gallicanism,  and  even  Quietism,  had  been  rooted  out  with 
holy  zeal  by  the  Jesuits,  there  was  a  better  opportunity  than  in 
France  of  realizing  the  ideal  of  a  City  of  God,  where  Truth,  as 
interpreted  by  the  Church,  should  be  the  law,  where  a  rigid 
morality  should  be  enforced  by  legal  penalties,  and  where  the  head 
of  the  State  should  be  guided  in  all  matters  pertaining  to  faith  and 
righteousness  by  the  one  competent,  because  divinely  inspired, 
authority,  the  Bishop.  Laval,  as  the  scion  of  an  old  house  and  a 
family  of  warriors,  was  himself  by  instinct  a  fighter.  Compromise 
was  as  hateful  to  the  Montmorency,  as  to  the  Churchman  it  was 
wicked.  Advancing  to  battle,  thus  formidably  equipped,  he 
wrestled  with  Governor  after  Governor  till,  under  Frontenac,  the 
quarrel  assumed  so  grave  an  aspect  as  seriously  to  threaten  the 
safety  of  the  Colony. 

While  disputing  every  inch  of  ground  in  the  interest  of  his 
prerogatives,  the  Bishop  was  founding  and  organizing  a  seminary 
for  the  education  of  the  priesthood,  establishing  country  parishes 
and  placing  in  them  men  of  the  same  simple-hearted,  earnest 
type  as  those  who  to-da\-  make  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in 
Canada  the  brightest  example  to  the  world  of  what  the  system  in 
its  purity  can  produce.  So  whether  we  admit  or  not  the  validity 
of  his  claims  as  the  anointed  of  the  Lord,  or  whether  we  approve 
or  disapprove  of  his  methods  of  warfare,  all  must  applaud  the 
courage  with  which  he  fought  for  what  he  was  convinced  was 
right,  and  admit  his  title  to  a  foremost  place  among  the  great 
ecclesiastical  educators  of  the  Continent. 

Possessing  so  strong  an  instinct  of  authority,  and  holding  such 
extreme  hierarchal  views.  Laval  sided  of  necessity  with  the  Jesuits 
against  the  Abbe  Queylus.  In  the  exercise  of  his  powers  as 
Vicaire  Apostolique.  he  abolished  the  ofifice  of  Vicaire  General, 
and  ordered  the  Abbe  to  leave  the  colony.  For  a  time  the  re- 
ligious communities  hesitated  to  surrender  to  the  Bishop's 
claim.  The  Bishop  of  Petraea  was  not  Bishop  of  Que- 
bec, and  it  was  not  clear  exactlv  what  rights  the  title  conveyed. 


A   VIGOROUS   ECCI.KSIASTICAI,    RIIJ.R.  4I9 

But  whatever  doul)t  they  inioht  have  on  this  point,  the  liohkr  of 
it  left  no  uncertainty  in  their  minds  as  to  liis  understancHui;-  of  his 
position  and  duties  ;  and  before  his  bold,  unhesitating^  assunijitioii 
of  full  episcopal  dignity  and  rights,  all  hesitation  and  resistance 
soon  vanished.'''  He  had  made  good  his  position,  indeed,  even  be- 
fore the  King  ordered  Governor  d'Argenson  to  publish  in  the 
Colony  his  confirmation  of  the  Bishop's  ap]:)ointment,  and  to  expel 
all  who  refused  to  submit  to  his  authorit}',  and  expressly  com- 
manded the  Abbe  Oueylus  not  to  return  to  Canada.  The  quiet- 
ing however  of  a  mere  ecclesiastical  squabl)le  did  not  make  peace 
in  the  Colony,  for  there  was  the  endless  quarrel  with  the  Civil 
Power  still  to  be  fought  out. 

Unable  as  the  people  were  to  foresee  tlie  influence  for  good  or 
evil  which  Mons.  de  Laval  would  exert,  it  must  have  been  a  festive 
day  in  Quebec  when  the  Bishop  with  his  accompanying  Clergy  ar- 
rived. As  they  stepped  to  land  on  the  bank  where  stood  the  Com- 
pany's house  and  store,  and  the  mercantile  establishments  of  the  five 
liundred  inhabitants  of  the  little  town,  they  were  greeted  by  the 
Jesuit  fathers,  the  Governor  and  stafif,  and  all  the  notable  inhabi- 
tants. We  can  see  them  as  they  wended  their  way  on  foot  up  the 
path,  which  has  been  widened  into  the  present  Mountain  Street,  to 
the  Church  where  they  were  to  thank  God  for  their  safe  voyage, 
and  can  imagine  the  effect  which  the  glorious  scenery,  the  strange 
motley  crowd  of  savages,  and  the  complete  novelty  of  the  situation 
must  have  produced  on  their  minds.  To  Laval  himself  it  must 
certainly  have  seemed  that  here  was  a  land  of  unbounded  promise, 
of  infinite  possibilities  for  the  Church  of  which  he  was  an  instru- 
ment ;  nor  was  he  greatly  in  error  if,  in  ])rophetic  mood,  he  felt 
assured  that  with  him  it  rested  to  give  a  direction  to  its  growing 
civilization,  a  stamp  to  its  moral  and  intellectual  development, 
which  ages  would  not  wdiolly  efiface. 

The  Jesuits,  in  1647,  had  commenced  building  a  stone  church, 
designed  as  a  basilica,  on  the  site  of  the  present  Cathedral,  after 

*  As  Vicairc  ApostoUquc  \\c  was  not  entitled  to  tlie  privilecros  of  a 
Bishop,  but  held  the  office  and  title  of  a  P.ishop ;  there  bein-  no  hit-lior 
authority  on  the  continent,  he  claimed  and  maintained  his  right  to  Episcopal 
authority. — GosscHn  T.  page  177. 


420  QUEBPX    IN    TIIK    SEVENTP.ENTH    CENTURY. 

the  destruction  by  fire  of  Champlain's  wooden  church  of  Notre 
Dame  de  la  Recouvrance.  It  had  been  opened  for  service  two 
years  before  the  Bishop  landed,  but  was  not  consecrated  until 
1660. 

There  was  no  presbytery,  however,  still  less  an  Episcopal 
palace.  The  Abbe  Queylus'  presbytery,  for  which  he  had  got  a 
judgment  of  6,000  francs,  had  not  been  built  so  the  Bishop  was 
fain  to  accept  the  hospitality  most  gladly  offered  by  the  religious 
bodies.  We  may  assume  that  apartments  in  the  Fort  were  at  his 
disposal,  but  he  wisely  judged  that  social  relations  with  the  Gov- 
ernor might  afterwards  embarass  him  in  his  public  capacity,  and 
restrict  his  liberty  of  action  ;  so  after  lodging  for  a  few  days  with 
the  Jesuits,  he  took  up  his  abode  in  a  room  of  the  Hotel  Dieu. 
There  he  remained  for  three  months,  but  the  Hospital  being 
crowded,  more  especially  after  the  arrival  in  September  of  the 
plague  ship  with  its  fever-stricken  passengers  bound  for  Montreal, 
he  removed  with  the  three  priests  who  had  accompanied  him,  to 
Madame  de  la  Peltrie's  house,  which  stood  near  the  corner  of 
Garden  and  Donnacana  Streets.  It  was  within  the  confines  of  the 
nunnery,  and  was  occupied  by  pupils  who  had  to  be  transferred  to 
the  main  building.  In  order  to  obey  the  canons  of  the  Order,  Mere 
Marie  de  ITncarnation.  the  Superior,  had  to  erect  a  fence  to  shut 
off  the  Bishop's  house  and  garden  from  the  nunnery  grounds. 

The  Bishop  paid  Madame  de  la  Peltrie  200  livres  a  year  rent, 
and  kept  the  house  for  two  years.*  He  felt,  however,  that  he  was 
putting  the  nuns  to  inconvenience,  and  he  therefore  returned  in 


*Mme.  de  la  Peltrie's  legal  husband  was  the  M.  de  Bernieres,  the 
ascetic  mystic  who  had  been  Monsieur  Laval's  spiritual  guide.  News  of 
de  Bernieres'  death  had  quickly  followed  the  Bishop  to  Canada.  Had  the 
Bishop  written  his  autobiography,  with  minute  and  candid  reports  of  con- 
versations, as  the  writers  of  his  own  age  were  in  the  habit  of  doing,  and 
had  he  incorporated  in  his  personal  memoirs  the  conversations  between  the 
widow  and  her  husband's  friend,  the  memoir  would  have  given  a  clearer 
insight  into  the  workings  of  the  human  mind  under  such  artificial  condi- 
tions, than  volumes  of  theological  and  metaphysical  speculation.  To  render 
the  situation  more  dramatic.  M.  de  Bernieres'  own  nephew,  and  therefore 
her  nephew,  Mons.  Henri  de  Bernieres,  was  a  member  of  the  Bishop's  suite, 
consequently  one  of  her  own  tenants. 


ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  CHURCH.  42J 

the  winter  of  1661-1662  to  the  Jesuit  College.  In  the  spring  of 
1662  he  and  his  clergy  moved  into  a  small  house  which  he  pur- 
chased, probably  on  the  site  of  the  present  office  of  the  Fabrique 
in  JJuade  Street,  to  which,  as  his  biographer  states,  he  trans- 
ferred the  rule  of  life  he  had  practiced  at  M.  de  Bernieres'  Hermit- 
age at  Caen ;  but  his  heart  and  his  steps  turned  continually  to  the 
Hotel  Dieu,  where  he  would  gladly  have  ended  his  days  in  close 
contact  with  sickness,  sadness,  sorrow,  and  death. 

But  to  return  to  the  Bishop's  early  labors.  He  wasted  no  time 
before  entering  seriously  on  his  great  mission  work.  He  had  the 
wide  experience  of  the  Jesuit  College  to  draw  upon  in  his  dealings 
with  the  Indians,  and  he  hastened  to  rivet  his  influence  over  them 
by  providing  a  great  feast,  which  he  seasoned  by  salutary  advice 
and  hearty  encouragement.  Before  the  month  was  out,  prepara- 
tions had  been  completed  for  a  pontifical  grand  mass,  the  gor- 
geous ceremony  of  which  made  strong  appeal  to  the  red  man, 
endowed  as  he  was,  and  still  is,  with  a  keen  sense  for  color  and  an 
appeciation  of  graceful  gesture  and  posturing.  The  mass  was- 
made  the  more  solenui  by  the  public  abjuration  of  his  damnable 
heresy  by  one  of  the  few  Calvinists  who  had  drifted  into  the 
Colony,  Thus  the  new  Bishop  was  enabled  by  significant  acts 
to  express  his  purpose  of  maintaining  the  dignity  of  the  Church, 
the  purity  of  its  doctrine,  and  its  charitable  methods  in  dealing 
with  the  erring  and  the  hungry. 

The  Abbe  Oueylus  had  begun  the  good  work  of  organizing 
regular  parishes.  Among  others  was  that  of  Ste.  Anne  at  Beau- 
pre,  the  corner-stone  of  the  foundation  of  whose  famous  primitive 
sanctuary  was  laid  by  Governor  d'Aillebout.  It  became  at  once  the 
scene  of  miracles  of  healing,  and  to-day  the  Bonne  .Ste.  Anne 
continues  to  bless  the  faithful  who  appeal  to  her  for  relief  in  the 
sumptuous  stone  church  that  has  replaced  the  former  Iniiuble 
wooden  structure.  The  Bishop  had  brought  out  with  him  some 
secular  priests  whom  he  meant  to  assign  to  these  parishes.  He 
was  keenly  alive  to  the  necessity  of  organizing  the  Church  on  a 
parochial  basis.  He  at  once  named  M.  de  Tauson  Cliarnv.  pres- 
byter and  judge  in  the  ecclesiastical  council.  In  August  he  ap- 
pointed Mons.  Torcapel,  a  secular  priest,  cure  of  the  parish  of 


422  QUEBEC    IX    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

Quebec.  In  recognition  of  the  eminent  services  of  the  Sulpicians 
at  Alontreal,  he  conferred  the  same  ofifice  on  one  of  them,  a  Mons. 
SoiJart,  who  had  the  merit  of  appearing  to  be  more  submissive 
than  his  brethren  to  the  authority  of  the  Saint  Siege  (Holy  See), 
as  represented  by  himself.  Close  as  his  relations  may  have  been 
with  the  Jesuits,  he  did  not  think  it  wise  to  retain  them  in  the  ful- 
filment of  parochial  duties,  and  consequently  relegated  them  to  the 
performance  of  their  proper  functions  as  educators  and  mission- 
aries to  the  natives. 

As  a  member  of  the  Governor's  Council,  the  Bishop  within  a 
month  of  his  landing  received  his  first  lesson  in  Indian  diplomacy 
at  the  grand  council  held  with  the  Mohawk  ambassadors,  who 
came  to  plead  for  the  release  of  their  tribesmen,  held  as  hostages ; 
and  he  was  perhaps  gratified,  perhaps  bored,  by  a  theatrical  per- 
formance given  in  his  honor  bv  the  pupils  of  the  Jesuits  in  their 
chapel.  Indian  and  white  scholars  took  part  in  these  exhibitions, 
which  testified,  not  only  to  the  efficiency  of  the  teaching,  but  to  the 
breadth  of  the  svstem  of  Jesuit  education,  which,  while  rigid,  ad- 
justed itself  to  the  weaknesses  of  human  nature.  His  sympathy  for 
the  Indians  was  early  brought  into  exercise,  as  we  find  him  paying 
half  the  ransom  for  two  Iroquois  prisoners  before  he  had  been 
three  months  in  the  country. 


CHAPTER  XXITI. 

The  Breaking  Out  of  the  Contest  Between  the 
Church  and  the  State. 

The  first  inklinj;^-  of  the  Bishop's  assertion  of  the  pre- 
eminence of  the  Church  over  the  State,  and  of  its  ministers  over 
the  ofificers  who  wielded  civil  power,  is  given  in  the  Jesuits'  Journal 
of  the  December  after  his  arrival.  On  the  eve  of  the  festival  of 
St.  Xavier  the  fathers  would  fain  have  asked  the  Coventor  and 
tlie  Bishop  both  to  dinner,  but  dare  not  for  fear  of  fanning  into  a 
ilame  the  smouldering  cjuarrel  over  the  right  to  the  first  place  at 
the  feast.  This  Covernor,  the  Viscount  d'Argenson.  was  not 
a  very  masterful  man,  yet  he  was  sufficiently  ])roud  of  his  lineage 
and  of  his  office  to  resent  the  assumptions  of  the  P)ish.op. 

The  first  recorded  controversy  turned  on  the  trilling  question 
as  to  which  of  them  should  occupy  the  seat  of  honor  within 
the  altar  rails.  Had  Laval  been  the  Bishop  of  Quebec,  and 
not  merely  Vicar  Apostolic,  with  titular  rank  as  Bisho]),  the  dispute 
could  not  have  arisen.  It  was  settled  as  the  Bishop,  who  was  de- 
termined to  be  a  real  Bishop,  willed.  A  further  quarrel  grew  out 
of  the  midnight  Christmas  mass.  The  Governor  had  heretofore 
been  incensed  by  the  Deacon.  The  Bishop's  instructions  were 
that  he  should  henceforth  be  incensed  not  by  the  Deacon,  but  by 
the  Thurifer  and  after  the  Clergy.  The  controversy  waxed  very 
Iiot.  The  Governor  based  his  case  on  precedent,  and  the  text  of 
the  Ceremonial.  The  Bishop  based  his  on  what  he  claimed  was 
the  custom  in  France.  The  intention  of  the  Bishop  clearly  was 
to  exalt  the  claims  of  the  Church  above  the  civil  power,  and  of 
the  clergy  above  the  officers  of  State,  more  especially  when  the 
former  were  performing  their  sacred  functions  in  the  house  of 
God.  Some  adjustment  of  the  quarrel,  we  are  not  told  what,  was 
brought  about  bv  the  Jesuits. 


424  QUEBEC   IX    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

(Jn  Epiphany  in  1660,  the  providing  of  the  Pain  Bciiit  fell  to 
the  soldiers  of  the  garrison,  on  which  occasion  they  marched  from 
the  Fort  to  the  offering,  with  drums  beating  and  fifes  playing,  and 
in  like  manner  came  again  to  the  church  at  the  end  of  the  mass. 
The  Bishop  was  shocked  by  the  interruption  and  unnecessary 
noise.  Nevertheless,  when  they  brought  him  the  chant ean  (a 
piece  of  the  Pain  Bcnit  offered  to  the  person  who  was  expected  to 
preside  on  the  following  Sunday),  he  returned  the  compliment  by 
the  gift  of  two  pots  of  brandy  and  two  pounds  of  tobacco. 
Though  subsequently  the  Bishop  fought  valiantly  against  the 
sale  of  liquor  to  the  Indians,  it  is  evident  that  he  was  not  by  any 
means  a  ])rohibitionist.  When  it  was  the  Governor's  turn  to 
provide  the  Pain  Bcnit,  and  the  drums  and  fifes  again  took  part 
in  the  ceremony,  the  Bishop  interposed  and  insisted  that  hence- 
forth the  Pain  Bcnit  must  be  delivered  at  the  church  before  the 
mass.  In  Holy  Week  the  Governor  by  mistake  knelt  on  the 
Bishop's  cushion  at  the  altar  rail,  and  when  he  discovered  the 
error,  rather  than  move  to  his  own,  he  left  the  church.  Inci- 
dents of  this  kind  must  have  amused  the  onlookers,  even  in 
Holy  Week.  The  Governor,  whether  from  a  desire  to  avoid 
misunderstandings,  or  from  lack  of  devotion,  was  not  very 
punctual  in  his  church  attendance.  This  may  have  been  the 
Bishop's  excuse  for  striking  liis  name  from  the  list  of  Honorary 
Churchwardens  without  notification.  The  Bishop's  own  dig- 
nity and  position  were  not  in  this  instance  in  question,  and 
his  act  bears  the  appearance  of  a  harsh  and  arbitrary  exercise 
of  ecclesiastical  authority,  admitting  that  he  acted  entirely 
within  his  prerogative.  But  Bishop  Laval  never  lost  an 
opportunitv  of  proving  to  his  flock,  not  only  that  he  was  clothed 
with  power,  but  that  he  had  courage  to  use  it  against  all  who 
opposed  themselves.  Mons.  d'Argenson,  people  could  not  help 
remembering,  had  been  the  host  and  friend  of  the  Abbe  Oueylus. 

It  was  not  onlv  in  matters  affecting  his  own  pretensions, 
however,  that  the  Bishop  went  to  the  very  limits  of  his  authority. 
For  example,  he  removed  a  serving  girl  from  the  house  of  a 
respectable  citizen,  a  ^l.  Denis,  and  put  her  in  charge  of  the 
I'rsuline  Xuns.  The  only  explanation  he  vouchsafed  was  that,  un- 


A  CASE  OF  DIABOLIC   POSSESSION.  425 

aer  the  seal  of  the  confessional,  he  might  have  become  acquainted 
with  information  that  warranted  the  act.  The  Journal  of  the  Jes- 
uits in  December,  1660,  contains  the  following  interesting  entry  : 
"Barbe  Hale  was  brought  from  Beauport.  She  had  been  for  five 
or  six  months  possessed  at  intervals  by  a  devil.  At  first  she  v^as 
put  into  a  room  of  the  old  hospital,  wdiere  she  passed  the  night  in 
the  company  of  a  guardian  of  her  own  sex,  and  of  a  priest  and 
attendants."  The  story  is  only  half  told.  The  other  half  is 
delightfully  narrated  by  Madame  de  ITncarnation.  It  seems 
that  there  was  a  certain  miller  who  was  adjudged  by  the  Church 
an  apostate  and  a  magician.  He,  by  his  diabolical  arts,  had 
bewitched  the  girl  and  persuaded  her  to  marry  him.  The  proof 
of  his  intercourse  with  the  devil  was  that  the  poor  hysterical  girl 
declared  that  he  visited  her  by  day  and  by  night,  after  demons 
had  appeared  to  frighten  her.  The  Bishop  sent  the  Jesuits  to 
exorcise  the  devil,  and  he  himself  adopted  measures  to  the  same 
end ;  but  Beauport  w^as  so  far  away  that  he  decided  on  plac- 
ing the  girl  under  the  charge  of  the  Hotel  Dieu  nuns,  and  put- 
ting her  sweetheart  in  prison.  This  treatment,  it  must  be  acknowl- 
edged, was  mild  compared  with  the  fate  which  would  have  over- 
taken the  pair  in  New  England.  The  authority  of  the  Church 
in  Canada,  sagaciously  administered  by  responsible  men,  had 
at  least  the  efifect  of  restraining  such  mental  vagaries  as  were 
attributed  to  witchcraft  in  New^  England  and  Germany,  and 
which  in  those  countries  were  punished  by  most  cruel  penalties. 
The  Bishop  held  that  neither  the  crime  of  witchcraft,  nor  yet  those 
of  heresy  and  blasphemy,  fell  tmder  the  jurisdiction  of  the  civil 
power;  and  Eather  Lalemant,  in  t66t,  tells  us  that  the  quarrel 
between  the  civil  and  ecclesiastical  authorities  came  nearly  to 
extremities  over  a  sentence  passerl.  probably  by  the  Bishop's 
ecclesiastical  tribunal,  on  a  certain  Daniel  Vvil.  He,  perhaps, 
was  the  heretic  who  had  renounced  his  errors  so  opportunely 
and  dramatically  on  the  occasion  of  the  Bishoj^'s  first  mass: 
if,  so,  he  now  figured  in  another  act,  for  shortly  after  Gov- 
ernor d'Argenson  handed  over  his  cares  and  his  quarrels  fo  his 
successor.  d'Avaugour.  poor  Daniel  \'vil  was  summarily  shot  for 
having    relapsed    into    heresy,    and    another    was    shot    for    the 


426  QUEBEC   IN   THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

crime   of   selling   brandy    to   the    Indians.      The    Bishop    was   no 
advocate  for  half  measures  when  moral  suasion  proved  inefifective. 

Before  Governor  d'Argenson  left  Canada  one  unseemly  insult 
had  followed  another.  In  February,  on  a  public  occasion,  the 
children  who  were  acting  in  some  performance  were  assigned 
parts  which  kept  their  hands  so  busy  that  instruction  was 
given  them  not  to  salute  either  the  Governor  or  the  Bishop,  both 
of  whom  were  present.  .Two  little  urchins,  however,  by  direction 
of  their  father,  saluted  the  Governor  to  the  great  offense  of  the 
Bishop,  for  which  they  were  soundly  flogged  by  their  spiritual 
fathers.  Immediately  after  this  incident,  the  Governor's  suite, 
"so-called  gentlemen,"  as  Father  Lalemant  sneeringly  calls  them, 
took  their  place  in  a  procession  after  the  Governor  and  in  advance 
of  the  churchwardens.  This  led  the  Bishop  to  forbid  all  future 
processions.  It  would  have  been  well  if  the  prohibition  had  re- 
mained in  force,  but  on  the  Fete  Dieit  a  pviblic  procession  took 
place,  as  previously.  A  temporary  altar  stood  before  the  Fort, 
The  Bishop  had  requested  that  the  soldiers  take  off  their  hats  on 
the  approach  of  the  Host,  and  to  this  the  Governor,  who  was  ill 
and  not  present,  consented;  l)ut,  when  tlie  procession  was  approach- 
ing, the  Bishop  further  insisted  that  the  soldiers  kneel,  on  pain  of 
his  passing  and  not  exposing  the  Host  upon  the  altar.  Knowing 
that  his  consent  would  be  interpreted  as  a  relinquishment  of 
his  military  command  into  the  hands  of  the  Bishop,  the  Gov- 
ernor refused  and  the   Bishop   accordingly  executed   his   threat. 

Terrible  events  were  meanwdiile  transpiring  in  the  Colony, 
which  was  never  nearer  destruction  at  the  hands  of  the  Iroquois 
than  at  that  moment.  That  the  Bishop  would  in  such  a  crisis 
have  intentionally  weakened  the  military  and  civil  influence  of 
the  Governor  is  not  to  be  believed,  for  the  Bishop  was  a  patriot ; 
yet  he  was  possessed  with  such  an  almost  fanatical  belief  in  the 
sacredness  of  his  office,  and  so  unquestioning  a  reliance  on  divine 
guidance,  that  he  was  blind  to  the  consecjuences  of  his  acts.  He 
had  yet  to  learn  that,  even  in  a  colony  swept  clean  of  heresy,  there 
might  be  a  certain  spirit  of  defiance  of,  if  not  disbelief  in.  ecclesi- 
astical authority  :  and  that,  unless  the  civil  power  co-operated  in 
maintaining  moral  order,  the  ecclesiastical  authority,  appealing 
only  to  the  conscience,  might  fail. 


M.  DAVAUGOUR  SUCCEEDS   M.   D  ARGENSON  AS   GOVERNOR.      427 

If  Governor  d'Avaugour,  d'Argenson's  successor,  consen!ed, 
immediately  on  entering  on  his  office,  to  the  execution  of  \'iolette 
and  another  culprit  for  selling  liquors,  he  speedily  repented,  for  in 
January  and  February  Father  Lalemant  records  in  the  Journal 
that  there  was  no  little  noise  over  the  permission  granted  by  the 
Governor  to  sell  liquor  to  the  Indians.     D'Avaugour  was  a  just 
man,  and  of  inflexible  determination  and  consistency.     After  hav- 
ing' inflicted  the  death  penalty  on  one  culprit,  and  listened  to  the 
violent    denunciations   launched   by   the   Bishop   against   all   who 
sold  brandy  to  the  Indians,  he  was  not  prepared  for  a  sudden 
change  of  policy,  when  Father  Lalemant  pleaded  with  him   for 
a  French  woman  convicted,  on  full  evidence,  of  the  same  crime. 
In  the  eyes  of  the  Governor  the  kindly  motive  of  the  suppliant  was 
no  excuse  for  his  inconsistency.     Not  only  was  the  request  vehe- 
mently refused,  but,  identifying  opposition  to  the  liquor  trade  with 
ecclesiastical  ultra-pretensions,  the  Governor  came  to  regard  the 
moral  and  humanitarian  position  of  the  Bishop  and  his  clergy  as  a 
mere  pretext  for  the  usurpation  of  authority  belonging  to  the  civil 
power.      D'Avaugour    was    utterly    indifferent    and    careless    as 
to  the  trifling  matters  of  precedence  which  had  so  worried  his 
predecessor.     As  far  as  he  was  concerned,  in  these  the  Bishop 
might  have  his  own  way  :  he  was  quite  willing  to  walk  after  the 
churchwardens,  or  to  let  the  soldiers  both  kneel  and  take  off  their 
hats  to  the  Host ;  for  his  part  he  was  girding  up  his  loins  to  fight 
the  Bishop  on  what  he  regarded  as  a  more  weighty  issue.     He 
began  by  what  in  modern  parlance  would  be  called  packing  the 
Council.     Of  his  own  authority  he  removed  certain  members  ar.d 
appointed  others,  replacing  even  the  syndics,  and  also  made  other 
mnovations.     He  was  preparing  to  fight  the  Bishop  a  oufraiicc 
on  a  question — that  relating  to  the  sale  of  brandy — on  which  the 
latter  could  command  but  little  support  in  the  Colony.     With  a 
quick  perception  of  the  situation,  Laval  took  ship  for  France  in 
August.  i66t,  to  plead  his  cause  at  the  foot  of  the  throne.     So 
effectually  did  he  do  so.  that  he  returned  to  his  diocese  in  thirteen 
months,  with  d'Avaugour's  recall  in  his  wallet,  and  with  a  Gov- 
ernor of  his  own  choosing  in  his  train — the  Chevalier  de  Mezy. 
One  of  Governor  d'Avaugour's  moves  to  weaken  the  influence 


428  QUEUEC    IN   THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

of  the  Jesuits  and  the  llishop  in  the  Council  had  been  the  sup- 
pression of  the  office  of  the  City  syndic,  who  had  a  seat,  and  who 
sided  with  the  priests.  It  was  an  unwise,  as  well  as  an  irregular 
act,  for  in  so  doing,  he  deprived  the  city  of  its  municipal  chief, 
and  disorganized  what  little  local  government  existed,  and 
consequently  the  machinery  for  the  suppression  of  crime.  In 
the  winter  of  1663  thieving  was  rife,  and  in  one  case,  in  which 
the  thief,  to  cover  his  crime,  set  fire  to  a  house,  the  death 
penalty  was  inflicted.  The  priests  attributed  the  frequency  of  the 
crime  to  the  disregard  of  the  Bishop's  excommunication  of  those 
who  sold  liquor.  A  more  natural  explanation  might  have  been 
found  in  the  weakening  of  the  civil  power,  owing  to  dissension 
between  the  Governor  and  the  Bishop.  The  Governor  had  been 
publicly  insulted  in  his  person  and  in  his  office,  and  the  Bishop 
was  known  to  be  in  France  using  every  effort  to  supplant  him. 
The  situation  was  one  well  adapted  to  encourage  the  criminal 
classes. 

On  the  i6th  of  September,  1663,  the  King's  ship  brought  back 
the  Bishop,  and  with  him  the  new  Governor.  The  Chevalier  de 
Mezy  had  been  one  of  the  Bishop's  companions  in  the  Bernieres 
Hermitage  at  Caen,  and  was  the  nominee  of  the  Jesuits  and  the 
Bishop's  own  choice.  In  the  instructions  given  two  years  after- 
ward to  the  Intendant  Talon,  he  is  told  that  it  was  due  to  the  com- 
plaints of  the  Jesuits  that  Sieur  d'Avaugour  had  been  recalled, 
and  that  the  king,  in  order  to  satisfy  them,  had  further  allowed 
them  to  nominate  his  successor.  The  dispatch  goes  on  to  narrate 
how  their  choice  fell  on  de  Mezy,  who  they  had  no  doubt  would 
act  in  conformity  with  their  wishes;  but  that  they  had  made  a 
mistake,  for,  when  once  in  power,  he  gave  free  rein  to  his  pas- 
sions, his  greed,  etc.,  etc. 

Thus  the  Bishop,  in  the  eyes  of  the  people  must  have  appeared 
to  be  endowed  with  the  powers  of  a  Minister  of  State,  able  to  make 
and  unmake  viceroys ;  and  the  prelate  himself,  we  may  be  sure, 
did  not  put  any  lower  estimate  on  his  own  influence.  What  tran- 
spired during  de  Mezy's  short  administration  to  transform  the 
friendship  existing  between  him  and  the  Bishop  into  bitter  enmity 
is    not    clearlv    recorded ;    but    that    veraciov.s    document,    the 


YET    ANUTIIEK    C'.OVEUXOR    IN    TkOUHLK.  4^29 

Jesuits'  Journal,  indicates  at  least  the  progress  of  the  alienation. 

The  Governor  and  the  Bishop  arrived  together.  On  the  feast 
of  St.  Xavier  they  dined  with  the  Jesuits  in  their  refectory  on 
refectory  fare.  On  the  first  of  January  the  Governor  and  the 
Bishop  take  part  in  the  Vespers  procession,  and  the  Governor 
invites  the  Bishop  to  dine  with  him,  but  not  the  .Superior  of  the 
Jesuits,  though  he  (Father  Lalemant)  and  the  Governor's  con- 
fessor, Father  Pijart,  had  made  their  customary  New  Year  call. 
Almost  the  next  entry  tells  of  the  breaking  out  of  trouble  over 
the  payment  of  tithes,  and  then  follows  a  reference  to  public  dis- 
order in  the  way  of  drunkenness  and  to  the  blasts  and  counterblasts 
of  the  Bishop  and  the  Governor  over  the  sale  of  liquor  to  the 
Indians. 

The  mention  of  the  Governor's  name  at  high  ecclesiastical 
functions  is  now  dropped ;  and  as  the  alliance  between  the  Bishop 
and  the  Jesuits  was  known  to  be  close,  it  was  probably  deemed 
wise  as  a  concession  to  public  opinion,  and  as  a  proof  of  the  inde- 
pendence of  the  Bishop,  that  all  the  secular  clergy  should  leave 
the  Jesuits'  quarters.  Personally  the  relations  of  the  quondam 
friends  had  become  so  strained  that  the  two  would  not  even  travel 
together.  On  the  25th  of  April,  1664,  Father  le  Moyne  returned 
from  the  Iroquois  country,  bearing  the  report  of  an  important 
negotiation.  The  Bishop  started  next  day  for  Three  Rivers  and 
Montreal,  the  Governor  following  two  days  subsequently.  By 
September  open  war  was  declared.  The  Jesuits  claimed  that  the 
Governor  was  acting  under  the  instigation  of  Peronne  Dumesnil, 
the  agent  of  the  extinguished  Company  of  the  One  Hundred  Asso- 
ciates. We  know  that  he  arbitrarily  dismissed  from  the  Council 
Bourdon,  de  Villeray,  and  d'Auteuil.  because  they  sided  with 
the  Bishop  against  himself  on  the  tithes  question.  Such  action 
was  not  only  arbitrary,  but  unconstitutional.  His  next  step 
was  even  more  prejudicial  to  himself  in  the  eyes  of  the  King, 
when  the  proceedings  were  reported.  He  had  the  astounding  folly 
to  propose  to  the  Bishop  that  the  successors  of  the  deposed  Council- 
lors should  be  elected  by  popular  vote.  This  of  course  the  Bishop 
refused  to  agree  to.  Bourdon,  one  of  the  deposed  Councillors, 
sailed    on    the    21st   of    September    to    lay    the    case   before    the 


430  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

King.  On  the  24th  the  Governor  nominated  new  Councillors. 
The  Bishop  protested.  On  the  28th  the  Governor  published  the 
names  of  the  new  Councillors.  On  November  ist  the  Bishop 
instructed  Mons.  Pommier  to  denounce  him  and  his  illegal  acts 
from  the  pulpit,  and  to  fulminate  against  him  a  decree  of  excom- 
munication. The  instruction  was  obeyed  and  the  Governor's 
Jesuit  confessor,  being  bound  to  respect  the  excommunication, 
could  neither  accept  his  Excellency's  confession  nor  grant  him 
absolution. 

The  quarrel  had  been  carried  into  municipal  afifairs,  and  the 
inhabitants  of  the  town  all  became  participants.  The  people 
elected  as  their  syndic  a  M.  Charron.  He  was  persuaded  to 
resign,  on  the  pretext  that  he  was  a  merchant,  but  really  through 
clerical  pressure,  because  be  was  a  friend  of  the  Governor. 
Party  feeling  thereupon  ran  so  high  that  the  next  attempt 
at  an  election  failed.  In  the  third,  which  w^as  attended  by  some 
irregularities,  a  Mons.  Lemire,  a  friend  of  the  Governor,  was 
elected,  and  a  protest  was  lodged  by  the  Bishop's  adherents 
in  the  Council,  led  by  M.  de  Charny  as  the  Bishop's  repre- 
sentative. The  Bishop  kept  his  temper— the  Governor  lost 
his.  Technically  the  Bishop  was  in  the  right ;  at  the  same  time 
he  took  the  most  ingenious  means  of  exasperating  his  foe.  To 
pray  for  your  enemies  in  private  is  laudable ;  praying  for  them  as 
sinners  publicly  is  to  insult  them.  It  is  a  weapon  which  exists  only 
in  the  armory  of  the  Church,  and  the  Bishop  used  it  freely  and 
without  scruple. 

Still,  on  New  Year's  day  of  1665,  the  usual  courtesies  were 
observed.  The  Jesuits  called  on  the  Governor,  although,  as  Father 
Lalemant  remarks,  "he  was  on  bad  terms,  not  only  with  them,  but 
with  all  the  priests."  The  Governor,  not  to  be  backward  in  cour- 
tesy, sent  his  Major  to  return  the  call,  and  took  the  opportunity  of 
forwarding  by  him  the  vouchers  for  the  Jesuits'  allowance,  which 
he  had  for  some  time  held  back.  The  Governor's  health  was  fail- 
ing. During  Lent  he  became  so  seriously  ill  that  he  was  removed 
by  his  own  wish  to  the  hospital  of  the  Hotel  Dieu.  As  death  ap- 
proached he  sought  the  good  ofifices  of  the  Jesuits,  and  through 
them  made  peace  with  his  enemv.   The  ban  was  removed ;  he  con- 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  DE    MEZY.  43I 

fessed,  received  absolution,  and  died  in  odour  of  sanctity  on  May 
7th.  He  was  buried  in  the  common  burying  ground  of  the  Hotel 
Dieu,  in  conformity  with  his  own  request  as  expressed  in  his  will, 
but  no  doubt  with  such  state  and  circumstance  as  the  Church  with 
its  limited  resources  could  muster  to  do  honor  to  a  vanquished  and 
repentant  sinner.  On  this  point,  however,  the  Relations  and  the 
Journal  are  both  silent. 

Thus  the  second  French  Governor  wdio  died  in  office  lies  in  an 
unmonumented  grave.  In  trying  to  estimate  the  character  of  the 
Governor  and  to  render  judgment  between  him  and  the  Bishop, 
due  account  must  be  taken  of  the  ambiguities  of  the  Constitution 
which  they  were  trying  to  put  into  force,  and  which  left  their 
respective  positions  dangerously  indefinite.  In  the  constitution 
of  the  Sovereign  Council  and  the  prominent  place  assigned  to  the 
Bishop —  a  rank  almost  co-ordinate  with  that  of  the  Governor 
himself — we  clearly  see  the  influence  of  the  Queen  Mother  whose 
papal  connections  caused  her  to  take  very  strongly  the  side 
of  ecclesiastical  authority.  Laval  was  probably  not  exceeding  his 
powers,  nor  yet  the  private  instructions  given  him  when  he  took 
out  de  Mezy  almost  as  a  member  of  his  ecclesiastical  establish- 
ment. But  many  years  of  this  joint,  but  really  disjointed,  civil- 
ecclesiastical  rule  had  not  elapsed  before  Colbert,  with  the  clear 
vision  of  a  statesman,  recognized  the  impossibility  of  maintaining 
order  and  prosperity,  where  elements  so  irreconcilable  were  yoked 
together  in  the  work  of  administration.  As  early  as  1667  the 
Minister  found  himself  regretting  that  the  Bishop  had  a  seat  in 
the  Council. 

De  Mezy.  it  is  evident,  was  an  impulsive,  enthusiastic,  ill-bal- 
anced man.  In  his  youth  he  is  said  to  have  been  wild.  License 
was  succeeded  by  austerity,  and  as  Laval's  companion  and  fellow- 
inmate  of  the  Caen  Hermitage,  he  showed  himself  so  obedient 
to  authority  that,  when  the  selection  of  a  Governor  for  Canada 
was  virtually  entrusted  to  Laval,  he  selected  him  as  likely  to  be 
completely  submissive  to  his  episcopal  dictation  in  the  new 
state,  the  Constitution  of  which  the  Bi.shop  himself  had  framed. 
But  the  Bishop  had  not  counted  on  another  phase  of  his  friend's 
character — a    stubborn    obstinacy    and    unreasonable    suspicion, 


'4^2  yUEBEC    IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

coupled  with  a  temper  violent  when  aroused.  The  Bishop  was 
no  less  obstinate  than  the  Governor,  but  he  had  been  educated  in 
a  Jesuit  College.  He  had  learned  the  first  lessons  of  the  astute 
code  of  the  Society  of  Jesus — absolute  obedience  to  your  Superior 
and  control  over  yourself.  In  Canada  he  recognized  no  superior. 
The  thought  of  his  high  and  sacred  ofifice  completely  dominated 
his  mind,  and  with  calm,  unflinching  determination  he  carried 
out  his  duty  as  he  understood  it.  He  was  obeying  the  dictate  of 
Heaven,  as  revealed  to  and  formulated  by  himself.  That  he  was 
doing  irreparable  injury  to  the  Colony  by  weakening  public  respect 
for  the  law,  in  the  person  of  its  chief  representatives,  would  not 
have  arrested  him  in  his  course,  even  could  he  have  appreciated 
the  fact.  That  such  was  the  case  was  proved  by  the  increase  in 
the  Indian  licjuor  traffic,  despite  the  re-enactment  of  the  prohibi- 
tions, with  the  approval  of  the  Governor,  who  agreed  in  this  re- 
spect with  the  Bishop.  De  Mezy  was  palpably  in  the  wrong,  and 
yet  so  maddened  was  he  by  the  calm  and  exasperating  acts  of  his 
foe,  that  we  cannot  but  pity  him.  Had  de  Mezy  been  the  only 
Governor  with  whom  the  Bishop  quarreled,  we  might  attribute  the 
fault  entirely  to  him  ;  but  no,  he  was  only  one  in  a  succession  of 
Governors  with  all  of  whom  the  same  Bishop  either  had  quar- 
reled or  was  destined  to  quarrel  on  one  plea  or  another.  Unless 
the  civil  Governor  would  bow  implicitly  to  his  will  and  opinion, 
no  matter  what  the  question  at  issue,  he  would  use  against  him  all 
the  artillery  of  the  Church.  To  doubt  his  own  infallibility  on  cer- 
tain questions  never  occurred — could  not  occur — to  him.  To  win 
over  his  enemy  by  propitiatory  tactics  was  not  in  his  nature.  The 
charity  which  suffers  long  and  is  kind  was  not  a  characteristic  of 
Canada's  first  Bishop,  at  this  period  of  his  life. 

The  reports  made  by  the  Bishop  of  the  Governor's  misdeeds, 
confirmed  by  Bourdon's  personal  appeal  to  the  King  for  redress, 
led  to  de  Mezy's  recall.  M.  de  Courcelle,  who  came  out  as  his 
successor,  ]\1.  de  Tracy,  who  was  appointed  to  the  still  higher  office 
of  Viceroy  and  Lieutenant-general  of  all  the  possessions  of 
France  in  the  New  World,  and  the  Tntendant  Talon,  were  com- 
missioned to  investigate  the  charges  against  him,  and,  if  they  were 
found  true,  to  send  him  under  arrest  to  France.     He  had  died 


VICEROY,  GOVERNOR,  AND  INTENDANT.  433 

before  their  arrival ;  but  it  is  not  probable  that  they  would  liave 
found  him  guilty  of  any  crime  punishable  by  a  more  serious  forfeit 
that  loss  of  his  office,  and  of  that  he  had  already  been  deprived. 
The  new  rulers  themselves  had  not  been  long-  in  the  country  before 
the  Governor  at  least  commenced  to  smart  under  the  thraldc^m  of 
his  ecclesiastical  colleagues  in  the  Council ;  and  it  re(iuired  all 
the  tact  of  his  associates  to  prevent  a  recurrence  of  the  disorders 
they  had  come  out  commissioned  to  correct.  Colbert  had  to  warn 
the  Governor  to  behave  with  tenderness  towards  everyone,  and  to 
restrain  his  irritation,  and  not  cast  blame  publicly  on  the  actions 
of  the  Bishop.  Talon,  the  Intendant,  having  Gallican  tendencies 
was  impatient  under  the  yoke.  The  deposed  members  of  the 
Council  were  nevertheless  restored,  and  only  one  of  de  Mezy's  ap- 
pointees, de  la  Tesserie,  was  re-appointed.  Bourdon  was  made  Pro- 
curciir  Gcvicral,  and  M.  de  Villeray  Deputy  Chairman  of  the 
Council.  By  this  action  the  chiefs  of  the  State  justified  the  Bishop 
and  the  Jesuits  and  condemned  de  Mezy,  who.  there  can  be  little 
doubt,  was  carried  by  his  passionate  narrowness  into  committing 
acts  of  injustice,  when  he  accepted  Dumesnil's  indictment  of 
friends  of  the  Bishop  and  of  the  priests  without  sufficient  investi- 
gation and  proof. 

The  first  friction  between  the  new  Governor  and  the  ecclesi- 
astical authorities  occurred  after  de  Courcelle's  unfortunate  and 
ill-advised  winter  expedition  against  the  Iroquois.  He  was  to 
have  been  joined  by  a  large  party  of  Algonquins.  As  they 
failed  to  keep  their  engagement,  and  thus  left  him  withcnit  guides, 
the  enterprise  ignominously  failed.  The  Governor  blamed  the 
Jesuits  for  the  perfidy  of  their  converts,  and  the  Intendant  sided 
with  him  in  his  opinion  or  his  prejudice.  Whether  he  was 
right  or  not  is  incapable  of  determination,  but  the  incident 
afifords  proof,  if  proof  be  needed,  of  the  incongruity  of  using 
ministers  of  religion  to  conduct  negotiations  of  State,  and  of  the 
complications  which  are  almost  sure  to  ensue.  The  Jesuits  had 
been  used  as  instruments  of  statecraft  in  the  dealings  of  the 
colonial  Government  with  both  the  Iroquois  and  the  Algonquins. 
Even  Lahontan  admits  that  their  intimate  knowledge  of  the 
Indian  languages  and  of  Indian  customs  made  the  enlistment  of 


434  QUEBEC    IX    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

their  services  almost  a  matter  of  necessity.  At  the  same  time,  by 
accepting  such  commissions,  they  exposed  themselves  to  blame 
which  often  should  have  rested  on  the  perfidious  savages  with 
whom  thev  had  to  deal. 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

Laval  as  Bishop  of  Quebec,  and  the  Tithes 
Question. 

The  Marquis  de  Tracy  came  out  as  Viceroy  to  hold  office  only 
temporarily,  his  special  mission  being  to  restore  peace  and  estab- 
lish equilibrium  between  the  Church  and  the  State.  At  that 
time,  when  the  influence  of  the  Queen  Mother  and  her  Jesuit 
directors  was  paramount,  it  was  expected  that  these  two  forces 
would  combine  to  enable  France  to  fulfill  in  America  her  double 
mission  of  empire-builder  and  evangelizer.  i\s  long  as  the  per- 
sonal influence  of  the  Viceroy  was  exerted,  Courcelle  as  Gov- 
ernor and  Talon  as  Intendant  maintained  an  attitude  of  respectful 
deference  to  the  ecclesiastical  power ;  but  neither  during  his  first 
nor  his  second  administration  could  Talon  reconcile  himself  to  the 
pretentions  of  Laval,  while  Courcelle  was  overtly  hostile  to 
both  the  Bishop  and  the  Jesuits.  It  was  in  consequence  doubtless 
of  the  opposition  they  manifested  that  the  Rishop  wrote  to  the 
Propaganda  shortly  after  his  departure  from  Canada,  in  167 1  :  "I 
have  learned  by  long  experience  how  little  weight  the  title  of 
Vicar  Apostolic  carries  with  those  charged  with  the  political  busi- 
ness of  the  king's  colony.  I  mean  the  officers  of  Court,  who 
are  perpetually  at  odds  with,  and  casting  contempt  on,  the 
ecclesiastical  power,  objecting  that  the  authority  of  a  A'icar 
Apostolic  is  a  doubtful  quantity  and  should  be  kept  in  check. 
This  is  the  reason  why,  after  mature  consideration,  I  have  come 
to  the  conclusion  to  throw  up  my  charge  and  not  return  to  Xew 
France,  unless  I  am  created  a  Bishop,  and  unless  fortified  by 
bulls  constituting  me  the  Ordinary.  This  is  the  purpose  of  my 
journey  to  France,  and  this  my  earnest  prayer." 

Thus   he   wrote   prior   to    1671,   though   in    the   ])revious   year 


43^  QUEBEC   IN   THE  SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

Quebec  had  been  erected  into  a  town  by  the  Consistorial 
Congregation,  and  its  parish  church  made  a  Cathedral.  The 
French  Court  was  anxious  that  he  should  be  created  a  Bishop, 
with  full  episcopal  powers ;  nevertheless  three  years  of  negotiation 
between  the  See  of  Rome  and  Louis  XIV^  intervened  before  his 
consecration  took  place.  The  difficulty  grew  out  of  the  revival 
of  the  old  claims  of  the  See  of  Rouen  to  exercise  episcopal  juris- 
diction in  Canada.  The  Crown  of  France  wanted  to  bind  the 
new  colony,  ecclesiastically,  through  its  Bishop,  to  a  French 
archiepiscopal  see.  The  Pope  refused  to  nominate  a  Bishop, 
unless  he  were  made  directly  responsible  to  the  See  of  Rome, 
and  unless  the  new  diocese  were  placed  on  a  footing  which 
would  preclude  any  such  claims  to  local  independence  as  were 
then  being  mooted  by  the  Church  in  France.  The  King  had  ulti- 
mately to  yield  to  the  Pope,  and  subsequent  events  justified  in 
great  measure  the  wisdom  of  the  papal  contention ;  for  when  the 
country  passed  from  the  dominion  of  France  to  that  of  Great 
Britain,  the  transfer  caused  no  such  complications  as  would  have 
resulted  had  the  Church  in  Canada  been  subject  to  Galilean  juris- 
diction. 

It  was  September,  1675,  before  Bishop  Laval  returned  to  Que- 
bec as  its  Bishop.  Notable  changes  had  taken  place  during  his 
absence.  Governor  de  Courcelle  had  been  recalled  three  years 
before ;  Canada  had  greeted  in  his  place  Louis  de  Buade,  Comte 
de  Frontenac,  a  man  who  meant  to  be  Governor  in  reality,  and  not 
merelv  in  name ;  the  Litendant  Talon  had  taken  his  departure 
a  month  or  two  after  the  new  Governor's  arrival.  The  latter  had 
been  carrying  things  with  a  high  hand.  Two  priests  had  already 
been  thrown  into  prison.  The  first  of  these  was  Mons.  Morel,  who 
exercised  curial  functions  on  the  South  Shore  ;  his  ofifence  was  re- 
fusing to  recognize  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Council  when  summoned 
to  answer  for  alleged  irregularities  committed  by  himself  and  his 
churchwardens.  The  second  was  the  Abbe  Fenelon,  a  Sulpician, 
elder  brother  of  the  great  Fenelon,  who  siding  with  Mons.  Perrot, 
the  Governor  of  Montreal,  in  a  contest  which  he  was  waging  with 
the  Governor  General,  had  denounced  Frontenac  from  the  pulpit 
as  a  tvrant.    Having  in  consequence  been  cited  before  the  Coun- 


LAVAL   AS   BISHOP   OF   QUEBEC.  437 

cil,  he  appeared,  but  merely  to  deny  its  right  to  try  him  ;  and 
so  he  followed  Mons.  Morel  to  prison.  Alons.  de  Uernieres, 
the  iiishop's  representative  had  also  been  summoned  before 
the  Council  to  give  evidence  in  the  iMnelon  case.  He  obeyed 
the  summons,  but  claimed  his  right  to  the  liishop's  seat,  l-'ron- 
tenac  refused  to  recognize  the  claim  on  the  plea  that  Alons.  de 
Tracy  had  altered  the  constitution  of  the  Council,  and  that 
neither  the  Bishop  nor  his  representative  had  for  years  taken 
part  in  its  deliberations.  In  this  case,  however,  the  Governor 
did  not  go  to  the  length  of  imprisonment.  Matters  had  reached 
a  deadlock,  owing  to  the  indisposition  of  the  Council  to  render 
definite  judgment,  and  the  whole  case  had  been  referred 
to  the  King.  Frontenac  had  been  appointed  while  Laval  was 
still  in  France,  and  his  masterful  and  domineering  character 
must  have  been  well  known  to  the  Bishop.  The  idea  seems 
a  plausible  one  that  he  was  chosen  by  Colbert  to  counteract  the 
power  of  the  Church  ;  so  that  while  the  King  was  with  one  hand 
strengthening  the  position  of  Laval,  he  was,  with  the  other, 
signing  the  commission  of  a  Governor,  who  was  expected  to 
prevent  any  ecclesiastical  encroachment  on  the  province  of  the 
State. 

The  contest  between  Laval  and  d'Avaugour  over  questions  of 
precedence,  and  that  between  the  Bishop  and  de  Mezy  over  tithes 
and  the  appointment  of  councillors,  were  mere  skirmishes  com- 
pared with  the  battle  which  was  now  imminent.  The  prospect  of 
a  fight  with  an  adversary  like  Frontenac  nuist  have  impelled 
Laval  to  hurry  back  to  his  see.  During  his  absence  sad  gaps 
had  been  made  in  the  little  group  of  his  intimate  and 
sympathetic  friends.  The  first  generation  of  the  makers  of 
Canada  was  passing  away.  He  had  jirobably  helped  to  la\- 
to  rest,  just  before  sailing  from  France,  the  remains  of  the 
great  Cardinal's  niece,  the  Duchess  d'Aiguillon.  Madame  de 
la  Peltrie,  that  charming  embodiment  of  religious  devotion 
and  impulsive  generosity,  whose  house  was  at  everyone's  dis- 
posal, had  breathed  her  last  in  November,  1671,  in  the  nunnery 
of  the  L^rsulines,  of  which  she  was  the  lay  founder.  Less  than 
six  months  later  she  was  followed  to  the  grave  by  her  devoted 


438  QUEBEC    IX    THE  SEVEXTEENTH    CEXTURY. 

partner,  the  Alere  Marie  de  I'lncarnation,  the  first  Lady  Superior 
of  the  L'rsuHnes.  It  often  happens  that  the  closest  friends  diiler 
diametrically  in  disposition ;  and  it  may,  therefore,  have  been 
because  of  their  wide  diversity  of  character  that  these  two 
pious  women  remained  through  life  such  ardent  admirers  of 
each  other's  virtues,  and  co-operated  so  actively,  though  by  oppo- 
site methods,  in  the  same  noble  work — the  one  almost  too  busy 
in  worldly  aflfairs,  the  other  almost  a  mystic  ;  the  one  winning  the 
Indians  by  her  solicitude  for  their  temporal  welfare,  the  other 
attracting  them  to  herself  and  the  Church,  through  the  same 
quietness  of  spirit  and  demeanor,  and  the  same  proneness  to 
dreams  and  ecstatic  visions,  which  are  conspicuous  in  the 
Indian's  own  character.  The  latter,  notwithstanding  the  touch  of 
exaltation  in  her  character,  was  a  woman  of  rare  good  sense, 
whose  letters  are  more  valuable  as  sources  of  contemporary  his- 
tory than  even  the  Relations  of  the  Jesuits.  They  describe  simply 
but  graphically  what  was  occurring  in  the  little  community,  every 
event  of  interest  in  which  was  known  and  well  talked  over  within 
the  walls  of  the  nunnery  before  being  written  down  for  the  en- 
lightenment and  edification  of  her  dear  son,  Claude  Martin.  They 
were  not  indited,  as  were  the  Relations,  for  the  purpose  of  exciting 
emotion  or  of  drawing  pecuniary  contributions  from  the  devout 
laity  of  France. 

These  were  not  the  only  losses  sustained  by  the  religious  com- 
munity of  Canada.  In  the  year  following  the  translation  of 
Mere  de  ITncarnation  there  passed  away  Pere  Jerome  Lalemant. 
who  had  been  twice  Superior  of  the  Canadian  mission  ;  had  spent 
years  in  active  service  with  the  Hurons  before  their  dispersion  ; 
had  crossed  and  recrossed  the  sea  to  plead  for  the  Indians  in 
France  :  and  had  for  the  last  time  returned  to  Quebec  with  Bishop 
Laval  himself  in  1659,  when  sixty-six  years  old.  He  was  seventy- 
two  vears  old  before  he  resigned  the  of^fice  of  Superior  for  the 
last  time  to  Father  Mercier.  The  entries  in  his  journal  bespeak 
a  growing  qucrulnnsness  rather  than  the  mellowness  of  spirit 
which  we  like  to  think  of  as  associated  with  advancing  years.  Nev- 
ertheless, he  was  doubtless  to  many  others  what  Alere  de  I'lncar- 
nation said  he  was  to  her — "Of  all  men  in  the  world  the  one 


THE    KliCOLLETS    RE-ESTAI!l.IS[I  ED    IN    CAXAIX\.  439 

to  whom  she  owed  the  most  for  his  s[)iriiual  cuh'ice.  " — one  also, 
as  she  further  acknowledges,  from  whom  she  had  receivetl  valua- 
able  worldly  counsel  in  the  establishment  and  management  of  her 
nunnery.  To  Laval,  ignorant  of  the  characteristics  of  the  native 
races,  and  of  the  temj)er  of  the  colonists,  Lalemant's  conversa- 
tion on  their  long  sea  voyage,  and  his  counsel  in  many  trying 
dilemmas  afterwards,  must  have  been  invaluable  and  most  wel- 
come. It  may  be  doubted  at  the  same  time  whether  his  advice 
was  always  for  the  best,  for  Lalemant's  predilections  and  opinions 
harmonized  too  completely  with  the  Bishop's  to  fit  him  for  a 
peacemaker.  Now  he  was  gone— with  his  eightv  vears  of  ex- 
perience and  his  deeply  implanted  prejudices — and  the  Bishop 
himself  was  growing  too  old  to  make  any  more  close  friends. 

A  still  more  picturesque  figure  disappeared  during  the  same 
period — Mdlle.  Jeanne  Mance,  one  of  the  lay  founders  of  the 
Hotel  Dieu  of  Montreal,  who  had  braved  all  the  dangers  of  the 
Iroquois  war,  when  Montreal  was  protected  by  nothing  better  than 
a  stockade.  She,  however,  was  a  figure  with  which  Quebec  was 
but  little  familiar. 

It  did  not  help  to  console  the  Bishop  for  the  loss  of  so  many 
of  his  old  friends  to  find  the  Recollet  Fathers,  whom  he  had  been 
obliged  to  welcome  by  order  of  the  King  before  his  departure,  in 
favor  alike  with  the  people  and  the  civil  powers.  The  Francis- 
cans had  never  abandoned  their  hope  of  returning  to  their 
work,  and  re-entering  on  the  possession  of  their  property 
in  Canada.  The  Company  of  the  One  Hundred  Associates, 
however,  considered  that  the  payment  of  a  subsidy  to  one 
religious  body  was  burden  enough  ;  while  the  Jesuits  naturally 
preferred  not  to  share  the  glory  of  converting  the  continent 
with  the  members  of  an  order  with  which,  though  it  had 
given  to  the  Church  manv  saintlv  lives,  they  had  few  ]')oints  of 
similarity,  and  consequently  only  a  moderate  degree  of  sym- 
pathy. Still  the  Jesuits  were  not  universally  popular,  anrl  thus, 
while  the  friars  on  one  side  of  the  zA.tlantic  longed  to  return, 
there  was  a  large  section  of  the  people  on  the  other  which  as 
heartily  wished  to  see  their  sandaled  feet  treading  again  the  banks 
of  the  St.  Charles.    Tradition  remembered  their  ecclesiastical  rule 


44<?  QUEBEC    IN    THE   SEV'ENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

as  mild  compared  with  the  iron  thraldom  of  the  Bishop  and  his 
Jesuit  co-laborers.  Doubtless  the  laxity  of  the  earlier  regime 
was  exaggerated  in  memory,  while  the  grievances  of  the  pres- 
ent were  aggravated  by  political  feeling  and  party  dissension.  A 
certain  section  of  the  people  had  always  been  disposed  to  be 
restive  under  priestly  dominance,  and  these,  since  the  time  of  de 
Lauzon,  had  formed  a  more  or  less  coherent  party,  sympathizing 
with  the  Governor  in  his  quarrel  with  the  Church. 

The  imposition  of  tithes  which  was  popularly  regarded  as  a 
piece  of  ecclesiastical  robbery,  had  helped  to  bring  about  the  re- 
turn of  the  Recollets.  Some  of  the  old  inhabitants  remembered 
the  mendicant  friars  who  had  lived  and  labored  among  them  with- 
out demanding  tithes  or  fees,  to  say  nothing  of  enforcing  them  by 
process  of  law,  and  they  asked  to  have  them  back.  Mons.  Talon 
had  been  only  too  glad  in  this  instance  to  obey  the  popular  voice, 
and  exert  his  influence  for  their  recall,  hoping  to  use  them  as 
a  buffer  against  the  Bishop  and  his  allies.  Consequentlv,  when  he 
returned  to  France  at  the  expiry  of  his  first  term  of  office,  in  1668, 
he  secured  the  assent  of  the  King  to  the  return  of  the  Recollets,  and 
induced  His  Majesty  to  embody  it  in  an  edict,  in  which  they  were 
bidden  to  resume  their  duties,  and  authorized  to  re-enter  on  the 
possession  of  their  property  in  Canada.  The  first  detachment  of 
the  Fathers  sent  out  suffered  shipwreck  and  all  were  lost;  but  in 
T670  Pierre  Germain  Allard,  Provincial  of  the  Order,  himself 
accompanied  three  friar  priests,  a  deacon  Frere  Luc,  renowned 
as  a  painter,  and  a  convers,  in  order  to  see  them  installed  at 
their  work  in  their  old  monastery,  and  to  secure  for  them  such  a 
reception  by  the  civil  and  ecclesiastical  authorities  as  the  King's 
support  and  their  former  labors  in  the  country  entitled  them  to. 

When  they  arrived  Courcelle  was  still  Governor,  and  was  as 
strongly  opposed  to  the  Bishop  as  the  lingering  influence  of  his 
official  guide  and  mentor.  M.  de  Tracv.  allowed  him  to  be.  Laval 
was  still  AHcar  Apostolic,  and  grieving  that  the  lack  of  full  epis- 
copal dignitv  derogated  from  his  influence.  The  Governor  and  his 
colleague,  the  Tntendant.  were  not  disposed  to  use  the  Friars  offen- 
sively against  the  Jesuits  or  the  secular  clergy,  and  the  Recollects 
themselves  were  religiously  intent  only  on  preparing  themselves, 


THE    RECOLLETS   AXTAGUXIZE    THE    lUSlIOl'.  44I 

by  learning-  the  native  languag-e,  and  familiarizing  themselves 
with  the  country,  to  re-engage  in  the  missionary  work  which 
they  had  so  successfully  inaugurated  more  than  half  a  century 
before.  Subsequently  their  attitude  to\\'ard  the  Bishop  changed. 
Having  no  independent  sources  of  revenue,  they  lived  by  beg- 
ging, or,  to  speak  euphemistically,  by  accepting  voluntary  contribu- 
tions. All  countries,  however,  where  such  professional  ecclesias- 
tical mendicants  have  become  numerous,  have  found  that,  after  the 
first  flush  of  real  religious  enthusiasm  has  waned,  the  work 
actually  done  by  them  is  quite  as  costly  as  that  performed  by  the 
paid  clergy,  if  not  more  so.  But  just  as  people  are  ready  to  pay 
more  in  indirect  taxation  for  the  support  of  the  State  than  they 
would  be  willing  to  contribute  in  direct  assessment,  the  amoinit  of 
which  on  each  occasion  they  are  distinctly  aware  of,  so  there  is 
a  seeming  advantage  in  the  gratuitous  enjoyment  of  spiritual 
ministrations  by  beings  so  saintly  that  they  live  on  nothing.  Sooner 
or  later  it  is  discovered  that  there  is  an  underlying  fallacy  some- 
where. Italy  and  Spain  and  all  the  former  dependencies  of 
the  latter  country  have  made  the  discovery  to  their  cost.  Canada 
was  saved  by  the  strong  sense  of  Bishop  Laval  from  the  inroad  of 
the  monks,  and  this  is  one  of  the  blessings  for  which  the  Church 
and  people  of  Canada  have  to  thank  him.  He  was  as  austere  and 
simple  in  his  mode  of  life  as  they,  but  he  wished  to  see  the  church 
placed  on  a  sound  financial  footing,  and  with  that  mendicacy  was 
incompatible. 

It  was,  however,  not  only  in  their  pretence  of  rendering  ser- 
vice without  remuneration  that  the  Recollets  ran  counter  to  the 
Bishop's  plans.  When  the  feud  broke  out  between  Frontenac, 
as  champion  of  the  rights  of  the  State,  and  Duchesneau,  who 
came  to  Canada  as  Intendant  in  1675,  and  who,  owing  his  ap- 
pointment to  Bishop  Laval,  was  entirely  on  the  side  of  the 
Church,  the  Recollets  became  ardent  partisans  of  the  Governor, 
professing  their  obligation  to  obey  his  commands,  even  if  they 
contradicted  those  of  the  Bishop.  They  carried  the  controversy 
into  the  pulpit,  to  the  great  indignation  of  the  Bishop,  who  seem- 
ingly forgot  that  he  had  himself  used  the  same  unassailable  plat- 
form from  which  to  attack  Frontenac's  less  powerful  and  resource- 
ful predecessor,  Mezy. 


442  yuEDEc  IX  Till':  se\extei-:ntii  cemurv. 

An  instance  of  this  occurred  when  Laval  appointed  a  certain 
local  friar,  Father  Adrian,  to  preach  the  Advent  sermon  in 
the  Cathedral.  The  preacher  in  his  discourse  more  than  hinted 
at  his  disapproval  of  the  alliance  of  the  Jesuits  and  the  secular 
clergy  with  the  Intendant,  Duchesneau,  against  the  Governor; 
whereupon  the  Bishop  called  him  to  account,  and  imposed  silence 
on  him  in  regard  to  matters  not  affecting  morals  or  doctrine. 
The  episcopal  admonition  was  not  received,  however,  with  per- 
fect submission,  for  the  ])reacher  claimed  that,  once  in  the  pulpit, 
he  was  nnder  the  inspiration  of  a  higher  powder  than  even  the 
Bishop,  and  dared  not  refrain  from  uttering  the  message  en- 
trusted to  him  by  the  Spirit. 

While  the  Recollets  were  thus  asserting  their  independence, 
preaching  and  administering  the  sacraments  beyond  the  limits  pre- 
scribed by  the  Bishop,  and  bringing  the  parochial  clergy  into  dis- 
favor, they  were,  despite  their  vows  of  poverty,  accumulating 
considerable  property.  On  their  return,  their  first  effort  was  to 
restore  their  monastery  of  Notre  Dame  des  Anges,  which  grew 
rapidly  into  large  proportions.  As  it  was  a  mile  and  a  half, 
however,  from  the  center  of  the  town,  they  petitioned  the  King 
for  a  lot  in  the  upper  town  on  which  to  build  a  hospice,  where  the 
sick  of  their  own  order  would  be  nearer  medical  assistance  than  on 
the  banks  of  the  St.  Charles.  This  petition  was  granted  in  i68r, 
and  a  large  lot,  known  as  the  '"emplacement  de  la  Senechaussee," 
covering  part  of  the  enclosure  now  occupied  by  the  English  Cathe- 
dral and  also  a  part  of  the  Place  d'Armes,  was  given  them.  The 
Bishop's  Grand  Vicar,  Mons.  de  Bernieres,  and  Mons.  Soiiart,  a 
Sulpician  from  Montreal,  assisted  in  the  ofificial  act  of  taking  pos- 
session ;  and  the  Bishop,  not  without  serious  misgiving,  consented 
to  the  erection  of  the  hospice,  but  only  on  the  conditions  attached 
to  the  grant  by  the  King,  namely,  that  it  should  be  used  solely  for 
the  treatment  of  the  sick  of  the  Order,  and  that  mass  should  be 
said  with  doors  closed  to  the  public.  But  the  Recollets  were  expert 
financiers.  The  King  allow-ed  them  the  small  sum  of  1,200  livres 
for  their  support,  on  express  condition  that  they  forbore  to  beg; 
and  they  not  only  succeeded  in  living  on  this  trifling  sum,  but  in 
building  a  monastery  and  a  church  on  the  site  of  the  unpretentious 


Ursiiline  Convent,  showing  line  uf  the  Vieille  Enceinte,  sliown  in  map 
opposite  page  504. 


RecoUet  Church  and  T  wers  of  Jesuit  Ciiurch  and  Cathedral,  taken  from  the  Place  d'Armes, 
Repi'duced  from  Smart's  drawinus  Hoil. 


A    "n(»S[>ICl£       THAT    DI'Aia,OI'ED.  443 

Jios[>icc.  La  Tour,  Laval's  first  biographer  ("Menioirc  sur  la  vie 
(le  Mons.  de  Laval,  Cologne,  1761,")  gives  a  terse  account  of  the 
wonderful  development  of  this  humble  hospice.  "A  beginning 
was  all  that  was  needed.  Every  germ  is  fertile  if  planted  by  a 
monk.  The  infirmary  soon  became  a  hospice  for  all  the  monks, 
whether  sound  or  sick,  and  the  hospice  grew  into  a  convent.  The 
latter  became  a  chapel,  and  the  chapel  transformed  itself  into  a 
church.  A  choir  and  a  sacristy  grew  up  together.  A  (l(irmitory 
was  added  to  the  infirmary,  and  a  refectory  and  kitchen  were 
necessary  adjuncts  to  the  dormitory.  The  doors  which  at  first 
•vere  shut  during  the  celebration  of  mass  opened  of  their  own 
accord.  At  first  only  some  devout  penitents  entered,  but  soon  the 
public  followed.  Low  mass  became  high  mass,  and  one  by  one 
all  the  functions  of  the  priesthood  were  exercised.  They  preached  ; 
they  heard  confessions ;  they  celebrated  the  feasts  of  their  order. 
A  bell  was  hung  in  the  steeple,  merely  to  remind  the  monks  of 
their  religious  observances,  but  it  also  called  the  people  to  wor- 
ship." 

The  Recollet  Monastery  was  built  partially  on  the  site  of  the 
present  English  Cathedral,  but  as  few  houses  divided  the  Place 
d'Armes  from  the  present  market  place,  the  Cathedral  and  the 
Jesuit  Church  stood  in  sight  of  one  another ;  and  the  monks, 
officiating  in  their  detested  conventicle,  desj)ite  episcoi)al  disap- 
proval, were  drawing  away  the  parishioners  from  the  teachings 
of  the  secular  clergy,  and  sowing  political  discord.  The  Jlishop 
could  not  silence  the  monks'  tongues,  but  at  least  he  succeeded  in 
silencing  the  unlawful  ringing  of  the  monastery  bell.  Its  claj^per 
remained  dumb  until  I^ishop  Saint  Vallier  bought  their  monastery 
of  Notre  Dame  Des  Anges,  and  converted  it  into  the  General 
Hospital  relieving  them,  as  a  condition  of  the  transaction,  from 
the  restriction  which  Bishop  Laval  had  imposed  upon  their 
ministrations  in  the  Copper  Town.* 

The  monks,  through  the  ]:)ersistency  with  which  they  invaded 

*It  should  be  mentioned  to  their  credit  that  they  were  free  enough 
from  bigotry  to  permit  of  the  Episcopal  service  being  performed  in  their 
chapels  at  Quebec  and  Montreal,  before  the  Protestant  Episcopal  cliurch 
was  able  to  provide  church  accommodation  for  their  own  bodv. 


444  QUEBEC    IX    THE   SEVEX  TEEXTH    CEXTURY. 

tFie  established  parishes,  and  preached  and  administered  the  sacra- 
ments, instead  of  confining  their  ministrations  to  the  four  Indian 
nations  to  which  they  had  been  assigned,  were  naturally  a  source 
of  intense  irritation  to  the  Bishop,  who  felt  that,  by  their  assump- 
tion of  a  character  of  peculiar  sanctity,  they  disturbed  that  implicit 
confidence  in  the  cure  which  it  was  so  important  that  parishioners 
should  repose  in  their  appointed  pastor.  It  has  not  therefore  been 
without  reason  that  the  secular  clergy  have  always  looked  with 
jealousy  on  the  monastic  orders.  It  is  right  to  add  that,  if  the 
monks  have  so  long  relieved  Canada  of  their  presence,  the  reason 
is  to  be  sought,  not  only  in  the  severity  of  the  climate — unsuited  to 
their  peculiar  costume,  the  very  cut  of  which  is  as  sacred  as  the 
rule  of  their  order — but  also  in  the  fact  that  the  clergy,  preserving 
the  pure  tradition  of  the  seminary  founded  by  Laval,  have  fulfilled 
their  spiritual  functions  so  thoroughly  and  so  faithfully  that  there 
was  no  room  left  for  interlopers.  If  the  itinerant  monks  were 
temporarily  welcome  until  the  cure  became  a  national  institution 
dear  to  every  French  Canadian  heart,  it  may  have  been,  as  Bishop 
Creighton  truly,  but  half  jocularly,  pointed  out.  because  "naturally 
men  preferred  to  confess  to  a  wandering  frair,  whom  they  had 
never  seen  before,  and  hoped  never  to  see  again,  rather  than  to 
their  parish  priest,  whose  rebuke  and  admonition  might  follow 
them  at  times  when  the  spirit  of  contrition  was  not  so  strong 
within  them."  The  position  of  the  monks  was  unstable  while 
Laval  was  Bishop,  but  Bishop  Saint  A^allier  found  them  use- 
ful as  allies  in  his  controversy  with  the  Seminary  and  the 
Seminary  priests,  and  gave  them  a  status  in  the  city  which  had 
been  refused  them  by  his  predecessor. 

Laval's  observations  during  his  many  years'  residence  in  the 
colony  had  convinced  him  that  the  Jesuit  fathers,  by  reason  of  the 
rules  of  their  order,  were  not  fitted  to  fill  the  functions  of  parish 
priests;  and,  therefore,  while  he  was  in  France  in  1663,  he  issued 
an  order  establishing  the  Seminary  in  Quebec  for  the  education 
and  maintenance  of  priests,  whether  they  were  occupied  in 
teaching  or  in  serving  the  parishes.  He  further  ordained  that  the 
tithe  of  one-thirteenth  of  the  produce  of  the  farms  should  be  pay- 
able to  the  Seminary,  to  which  the  parish  priest  was  to  remair 


OPPOSITION    TO    THE   LEVYING   OP   CHURCH    TITHES.  445 

attached  as  to  a  collegiate  body,  though  removable  at  tlie  will  of 
the  Bishop.  The  inhabitants  of  the  parish  of  Quebec,  which  at 
that  time  covered  the  seignories  of  Lauzon  and  part  of  the  Island 
of  Orleans,  were  for  some  years  to  pay  only  one-twentieth.  On 
October  loth,  1663,  the  Supreme  Council,  which  was  constituted 
immediately  after  the  Bishop's  return,  registered  the  tithe  ordi- 
nance, and  it  was  confirmed  by  Royal  patent. 

But  the  poor,  struggling  habitants  did  not  submit  to  the  imposi- 
tion and  collection  of  these  dues  without  a  murmur,  rising 
almost  into  revolt,  and  Governor  de  Mezy  sided  with  them. 
La  Tour  says  that  a  section  of  the  Council  opposed  the 
registration  of  the  letters  patent,  and  that  de  Mezy  appealed 
to  the  King  on  behalf  of  the  habitants,  claiming  that  the 
imposition  would  ruin  them  and  the  country,  and  arrest  fur- 
ther immigration.  The  exact  scope  of  the  imposition  was  also 
a  matter  of  dispute.  The  wording  of  the  ordinance,  as  drawn  by 
the  Bishop,  was  that  the  tithes  were  to  be  paid,  not  only  on  the 
produce  of  human  labor,  but  on  wliat  the  land  produced  by  itself. 
taut  de  ce  qui  uait  dn  travail  dcs  Jiommcs  que  de  ce  que  la  terrc 
produit  d'elle  uicuie.  When  the  opposition  became  violent  and 
widespread,  the  act  was  interpreted  as  applying  only  to  agricultural 
products,  the  fruit  of  the  soil  and  the  direct  results  of  human 
industry,  and  not.  therefore,  to  lumber,  and  still  less  to  manufac- 
tured articles ;  but  the  wording  of  the  ordinance  is  so  vague  and 
comprehensive  that  it  may  well  have  given  rise  to  apprehension 
that  the  clergy  would  claim  a  large  percentage  of  the  total  wealth 
of  the  whole  country.  In  this  matter,  however,  Laval  displayed  a 
forbearance  and  reasonableness  remarkably  at  variance  with  his 
attitude  on  points  of  prerogative  and  on  the  li((uor  question. 
The  noble  side  of  his  character  is  here  shown  in  a  strong 
light.  To  him  it  seemed  that,  however  necessary  it  might  be 
that  the  servants  of  the  Church  should  be  endowed  with  inde- 
pendent means  of  subsistence,  yet  he  and  his  clergy  could  live  for 
a  time  on  charity  without  injury  to  their  sacred  character;  on  the 
other  hand,  as  Bishop  of  New  France,  he  felt  that  the  position 
of  his  successors  to  all  time  would  depend  on  his  stubborn  defence 
of  the  episcopal  prerogative.     As  to  the  sale  of  brandy  to  the 


446  QUEBEC    IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

Indians,  it  involved,  in  his  opinion,  their  very  souls"   salvation, 
and  was,  therefore,  not  a  matter  for  compromise. 

There  were,  it  is  true,  many  other  interests  more  important  to 
the  colony  and  more  worthy  of  consideration,  even  by  the  head  of 
the  Church,  than  the  prerogatives  of  the  clergy.   There  were  other 
methods  of  checking  the  use  and  the  abuse  of  the  liquor  traffic  than 
perpetually  quarreling  with  the  great  state  officials,  because  the}- 
were  not  prepared  to  use  the  severest  form  of  coercion,  which  at 
best  would  have  proved  but  a  temporary  remedy,  and  would  cer- 
tainly have  injured  trade.     Still  it  was  not  entirely  on  this  account 
that   the   Bishop   was    unrelenting.      Moneymaking   and    money- 
getting    were    abhorrent    in    his    eyes,    and    the    moneymakers 
were    entitled    to    no    mercy.      Hence    the    injury    to    the    trade 
of    the    company    was    not    worthy    of    consideration.      And,    to 
be  consistent,  if  love  of  pelf  in  others  were  wicked,  love  of  pelf 
in  his  clergy  was  still  more  so ;  and  therefore  he  was  willing  to 
concede    a    point    in    the    matter    of    tithes,    while    remaining 
obstinate    in    opposing   every    infringement    of    his    official    pre- 
rogative and  every  practice  which  would  endanger  the  salvation 
of  the  Indians.     The  brandy  traffic  primarily  affected  the  interests 
of  the  trading  company  and  the  local  traders,  but  the  tithes  came 
out  of  the  pockets  of  the  poor  habitant,  and  for  him  the  Bishop, 
though  an  aristocrat,  perhaps  because  an  aristocrat,  had  much  sym- 
pathy.    He  consequently  modified  his  first  proposal  and  fixed  the 
tithes  for  the  whole  colony,  as  well  as  Quebec  at  one-twentieth, 
first  for  six  years,  and  then  for  the  term  of  his  life.     And,  as  in 
1665  discontent  was  still  rife,  he  consented  that  no  tithes  should  be 
collected  until  the  King's  will  could  be  known.    The  Royal  decision 
was    not    expressed    until    1667.      Popular    feeling    rose    high, 
especially   in    the   neighborhood    of    Quebec,    where    the    Bishop 
and    his    secular    clergy    were    personally    known.      The    ten- 
ants of  the  Seminary's  own  seigniory  at  Beaupre  were  so  incensed 
that  the  cure.  ^lons.  ?\[orel,  had  to  be  recalled.     The  people  were 
tmdoubtedly  desperately  poor.     The  surplus  of  produce  over  and 
above  what  was  necessary  to  maintain  life  was  small,  and  this  sur- 
plus was  the  onlv  commodity  convertible  into  money  or  goods. 
That  so  much  of  it  should  go  to  the  Church  must  have  seemed 


SETTLEMENT  OF   THE   TITHE  OUESTION.  447 

a  hardship,  the  more  so  as  the  Jesuits  were  the  largest  property 
holders  in  New  France,  and  the  Bishop  and  his  Seminary  were 
absorbing  a  large  part  of  what  was  left.  The  people  of  Canada 
were  all,  it  is  true,  Catholics ;  but  they  had  come  only  recently 
from  Old  France,  where  other  forms  of  revolt  against  extreme 
ecclesiasticism  than  Calvinism  were  rifo. 

The  last  chapter  of  the  story  of  the  tithes  is  soon  told.     The 
Marquis  de  Tracy,  at  the  suggestion  of  the  Intendant,  Talon,  and 
with  the  approval  of  the  Bishop,  so  far  yielded  to  the  discontent 
of  the  people  as  to  reduce  the  tithes  to  one-twenty-sixth  for  twenty 
years.     But  the  tithes  were  payable  to  the  cures  themselves  in 
thrashed  wheat,  delivered  free  of  charge,  not  to  the  Seminary  ;  and 
to  avoid  frauds  the  cure  could  have  the  harvest  estimated  a  fort- 
night before  the  harvest  time,  a  proviso  wdiich  indicated  clearly 
the   friction   still   existing  between   the   Church   and   its   children 
upon  this  burning  question  of  finance.     The  council  soon  cancelled 
the  condition  which  permitted  the  cure  to  assess  the  value  of  the 
crop,  and  moreover  exempted  all  new  lands  for  five  years  from  the 
imposition  of  any  tithes.     The  ordinance  of  Mons.  de  Tracy  also 
severed  the  dependence  of  the  cure  on  the   Seminary,  and  this 
severance  was  made  absolute  by  the  decree  of  the  King  in  1679. 
when  the  tithe  of  one-twenty-sixth  was  made  perpetual.  Neverthe- 
less, though  the  clergy  became  thus  more  intimately  allied  with 
their  flocks,  friction  still  continued.     If  the  tithes  fell  heavily  on 
the   habitant,   the   reduction   to   one-twenty-sixth    fell    still    more 
heavily  on  the  cure.     Frontenac  in  1678  for  once  took  the  side  of 
the  Bishop  in  a  conference  held  to  devise  ways  and  means  for 
meeting  the  clerical  budget.    The  best  they  could  suggest  was  the 
proposition  to  pay  each  cure  500  francs  a  year,  200  to  cover  i)er- 
sonal  expenses  and  300  for  board  in  the  family  of  a  parishioner. 
The  scheme  failed,  inasmuch  as  board  and  lodging  could  not  be 
secured  at  less  than  400  francs.     So  in  the  following  year  the 
subject  was   renewed  in  the   Sovereign   Council,  and   a  circular 
issued  calling  on  all  interested  in  the  subject  to  submit  their  views 
before  the  spring  of  1680.    IMons.  Pierre  Francheville  presented  a 
memorial  from  the  clergy  at  the  time  specified,  pointing  out  the 
anomalies  of  their  position,  and  praying  that  a  method  of  relief 


44*^  (JUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

should  be  devised,  and  funds  provided  for  paying  them  a  suf- 
ficiency of  income  when  the  tithes  failed.* 

A  complicated  system  of  determining  the  tithes  was  devised  by 
the  Council ;  and  the  King,  under  the  advice  of  the  Marquis  de 
Seignelay,  son  of  the  great  Colbert  and  his  successor  in  office, 
agreed  to  supplement  the  revenue  of  the  clergy,  derived  from  the 
tithes,  by  payment  to  the  Seminary  of  8,000  francs  annually,  of 
which  2,000  francs  was  for  the  support  of  aged  and  infirm  priests, 
and  1,200  for  a  church  construction  fund.  The  Seminary  became 
the  depository  and  dispenser  of  the  fund,  and  remained  so  until 
Mons.  de  Saint  Vallier  insisted  on  assuming  that  function  himself. 

The  clergyj  made  one  more  efifort  to  secure  the  original  toll  of 
one-twelfth  of  the  total  produce  of  the  soil,  including  flax, 
tobacco,  fruits,  vegetables,  hay  and  grain,  but  their  petition  was 
refused ;  and  by  the  ordinance  of  the  12th  of  July,  1707,  the  tithes 
were  fixed  at  one-twenty-sixth  of  cereals  alone,  an  arrangement 


*  Governor  de  Denonville  came   to    the   conclusion,  with    Abbe  de  Cheva- 

lieres,  that  fifty-one  parishes  were  required,  and  that  the  cures  could  not 
live  on  less  than  400  francs,  though  he  once  thought  300  sufficient.  Fifty- 
one  multiplied  by  400  equalled  20,400  francs,  and  as  the  tithes  yielded  only 
6,196  francs,  the  King  asks  Mons.  de  Champigny,  the  Intendant,  how  he 
expects  the  balance  to  be  provided. 

fin  1705,  two  priests,  M.M.  Boulard  and  Dufournel,  claimed  that  a  copy 
of  the  ordinance  of  the  23rd  of  August.  1667,  which  they  produced,  gave 
the  Church  tithes,  not  only  on  grain,  but  on  all  cultivated  products  of  the 
soil.  They  were  called  on  to  plead  their  cause  before  the  Council,  but 
the  Sieur  d'Auteuil,  the  Procureiir  General,  carried  his  point  against  them, 
and  the  Court  decided  that  the  ordinance  by  which  tithes  were  to  be 
paid  only  on  grain  was  of  later  date,  namely,  dated  Septetmber  4th,  of  the 
same  year,  though  not  even  a  copy  of  this  later  ordinance  could  be  pro- 
duced. None  has  since  been  found,  but  Judge  Beaudry  discovered  among 
the  judicial  archives  of  Montreal  the  original  ordinance  of  Aug.  23rd  of 
which  the  two  cures  had  a  copy.  The  ordinance  of  Sept  4th  could  not 
have  been  signed  by  Tracy,  as  claimed,  for,  according  to  the  Journal  of 
the  Jesuits,  he  had  sailed  for  France  on  Aug.  28th.  Nevertheless,  though 
the  decree  may  not  have  been  signed  by  the  Viceroy  on  Sept..  4th,  it  is 
inconceivable  that  the  clergy  would  have  submitted  at  that  date  to  such 
a  curtailment  of  their  dues  had  such  an  ordinance  not  been  passed.  The 
subject  is  discussed  in  detail  by  Thomas  Chapais  in  his  'Tife  of  Talon," 


A  FIRMLY-ESTARLISHED   KCCLESIASTICAL  SYSTEM.  449 

that  has  subsisted  from  that  day  to  this  ;  for,  as  under  the  Quebec 
Act.  the  French  of  the  Province  of  Quebec  retained  their  civil 
laws  and  their  rehgion,  the  Church  of  to-day  has  the  same 
power  over  its  flock  as  it  possessed  before  the  Conquest.  Its 
parish  priests  still  collect  their  tithes  of  one-twenty-sixth  by 
j^rocess  of  law,  and  the  arret  of  July  12,  1707,  is  virtually  in  force 
at  this  hour. 

That  the  opposition  of  bygone  days  to  the  compulsory  payment 
of  tithes,  when  heresy  was  virtually  illegal,  should  have  disap- 
peared to-day,  when  exemption  can  be  secured  by  any  one  claim- 
ing it  on  the  ground  of  change  of  faith,  affords  a  striking  proof 
of  the  greater  hold  religion  possesses  when  voluntarily  adopted 
than  when  forcibly  imposed. 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

The  Brandy  War;    Laval  and  Frontcnac   in   Conflict. 

As  already  stated,  the  brandy  question,  while  it  did  not  touch 
the  interests  of  the  fanner  so  sensibly  as  it  did  those  of  the 
trader,  still  affected  not  a  few  of  the  habitants  in  outlying  settle- 
ments, who  engaged  in  occasional  mercantile  transactions  with 
the  Indians.  Brandy  was  found  to  be  the  cheapest  article  of 
exchange,  and,  when  judiciously  administered,  a  valuable 
aid  to  negotiation.  The  mercantile  class,  and  the  agent  and 
members  of  the  mercantile  company,  regarded  freedom  of  .sale  of 
intoxicants  to  the  Indians  as  the  sole  means  of  successful  compe- 
tition with  their  Dutch  and  English  rivals,  who,  despite  certain 
mild  prohibitions,  used  whiskey,  which  the  French  called  rhom  de 
hiere,  because  made  from  barley  or  other  cereals,  as  the  most 
r  attractive  article  of  barter.  Col.  Dongan,  Governor  of  Xew  York 
under  James  II,  in  one  of  his  letters  to  Governor  de  Denonville, 
bluntly  expresses  the  views  of  the  English  colonists.  "The 
British  King,"  he  says,  "is  as  zealous  to  propagate  the  Faith 
as  anyone."  He  had  himself  asked  for  a  missionary  to  dissuade 
the  savages  from  their  drunken  debaucheries,  "though  certainly 
our  rum  does  as  little  harm  as  your  brandy,  and  in  the  opinion 
of  Christians  is  much  more  wholesome."  He  adds  the  remark 
that  "to  keep  the  Indians  temperate  and  sober  is  a  very  good  and 
Christian  performance,  but  to  prohibit  them  all  strong  liquors 
seems  a  little  hard  and  very  turkish."* 
I  On  the  other  hand  the  Church  regarded  strong  drink  as  the 

/    most  demoralizing  and  destructive  agent  to  the  life  and  well-being 

*During  the  invasion  of  the  Mohawk  Country  in  1692  by  the  French 
the  chiefs  of  the  Five  Nations  begged  Governor  Fletcher  to  prevent  the  sale 
of  liquors  to  their  braves   "while  the  war  is  so  hot." 


A    CLERICAL    VIEW    OF    THE    liRAXDV    OI'ESTIOX.  45 1 

of  the  aborigines  ever  introduced  by  Euroi)eans,  and  it  fouglit 
against  its  sale  or  administration  to  the  Indians  under  anv  plea, 
with  all  the  weapons,  si)iritual  and  temporal,  which  its  arsenal 
contained.  The  arguments  used  by  the  Church  were,  from  a 
moral  point  of  view,  unanswerable,  and  have  been  concurred  in 
by  the  governments  both  of  Canada  and  of  the  United  States,  the 
laws  of  both  countries  providing  heavy  penalties  for  all  venders  of 
whisky  to  the  red  men.  Nevertheless,  the  benevolent  and  humane 
efforts  of  the  Church  to  stem  the  tide  of  drunkenness  aroused 
bitter  opposition  on  the  part  not  only  of  the  Governors  buroFThe 
people  of  New  France.  Self-interest  accounts  for  that  opposition 
no  doubt  in  part,  yet  there  is  good  reason  to  believe  that,  had  the 
officers  of  the  Church  confined  themselves  to  argument  and  moral 
suasion,  instead  of  proceeding,  as  they  did,  to  violent  denunciation, 
excommunications  and  political  intrigues,  they  would  have 
effected  more  good  and  excited  less  anger. 

An  interesting  document  (su|)posed  b\-  the  Abbe  Faillnn  to 
be  from  the  pen  of  the  Abbe  Belmont,  author  of  the  earliest  history 
of  Canada)  has  been  published  by  the  Literary  and  Historical 
Society  of  Quebec,  being  the  history  of  brandy  from  the  Church's 
point  of  view,  and  consequently  revealing  not  a  few  divine  secrets 
confided  by  Providence  to  the  clergy  alone.  From  it  we  gather 
that  it  was  because  La  Chine  was  one  of  the  most  intemperate  of 
the  Indian  villages,  that  its  inhabitants  were  handed  over  to  the 
vengeance  of  the  Iroquois,  who  were  used  by  God  as  the  ministers 
of  His  justice.  The  same  place  we  are  told  was  further 
punished  by  the  destruction  of  its  crops,  for  having  entertained 
eighty  canoe  loads  of  visiting  Indians  at  a  famous  drinking  bout ; 
"that  evening,"  so  the  narrative  reads,  "the  wheat  crop  was  the 
finest  in  the  world  ;  the  morning  after  the  horrible  revel  it  was 
'usted  and  withered  as  by  a  fog." 

The  connection  between  the  debauch  and  the  blight  is  not 
apparent,  nor  were  signs  and  wonders  needed  to  prove  that  the 
traffic  was  nefarious.  The  crimes  committed  by  the  infuriated 
savages  ;  the  rapid  disappearance  of  whole  tribes  under  the  ravages 
of  whiskey  and  debauchery  ;  the  demoralizing  effect  on  the  white 
traders  of  being  allowed,  first  to  intoxicate  and  then  to  swindle 


452  QUEBEC   IN   THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

their  dusky  victims,  made  up  a  catalogue  of  evils,  resulting  from 
the  brandy  traffic  black  enough  and  long  enough  to  appall  the  most 
callous,  without  the  addition  of  any  heaven-sent  calamities. 

Churchmen,  however,  even  in  the  17th  century  did  not  alto- 
gether overlook  utilitarian  arguments.  The  brandy  question  hav- 
ing been  laid  in  the  first  place  before  the  theologians  of  the  Univer- 
sity of  Toulouse,  the  traffic  was  pronounced  to  be  not  illicit  in 
itself,  but  legitimate  or  illegitimate,  according  as  it  might  be 
carried  on.  And  the  reasons  given  by  the  traders  in  favor  of 
the  selling  of  spirits  to  the  Indians  were  considered  by  the  theo- 
logical faculty  as  conclusive.  They  were :  First,  that  the  sale  of 
brandy  attracted  the  Indians  to  the  French,  and  therefore  brought 
them  under  the  humanizing  and  refining  influences  of  that  nation. 
Secondly,  that,  when  temperately  used,  brandy  enabled  them  to 
resist  the  great  cold  to  which  they  were  exposed.  Thirdly,  that  it 
withdrew  them  from  intercourse  with  the  Dutch  and  the  English, 
and  so  protected  them  from  heresy.  The  Sorbonne,  on  the  other 
hand,  twice  pronounced  on  the  subject,  declaring  it  a  mortal  sin 
to  encourage  drunkenness  among  the  Indians,  or  to  sell  liquor 
wholesale  to  the  taverns  where  it  was  retailed  to  the  Indians.  In 
presence  of  these  contradictory  rulings  from  equally  high  authori- 
ties Frontenac  felt  justified  in  authorizing  the  traffic,  and  the 
Bishop,  no  less  justified  in  anathematizing  all  who  engaged  in  it. 
In  the  words  of  the  chronicler :  "The  quarrel  reached  such  a  pass 
as  to  divide  the  Church  and  the  world,  the  temporal  and  the 
spiritual  powers,  the  rulers  of  the  Church  and  the  rulers  of  the 
State.  The  controversy  was  waged  with  an  animosity  which 
deeply  grieved  all  moderate  men.  the  more  so  as  each  side  was  able 
to  array  a  host  of  maxims,  reasons  and  precedents  in  support  of 
its  case." 

The  Hurons  and  the  few  Algonquins  in  and  near  Quebec  being 
under  strict  ecclesiastical  control,  were  more  or  less  safeguarded 
from  the  evil,  which  was  seen  at  its  worst  at  the  annual  fur  fairs 
at  Montreal,  when  hundreds  of  Indians  came  down  from  the 
upper  lakes  with  the  courcnrs  dc  hois  and  white  traders,  all  of 
whom,  as  well  as  the  local  traders,  were,  from  good  fellowship 
as  well  as  self-interest  quite  ready  to  indulge  in  drinking  them- 


VIEVVvS  OF  THE  CIVIL  AUTHORITIES.  453 

selves,  and  to  encourage  the  habit  aniony  the  Inch'ans.  From 
Montreal  the  revelry  spread  to  La  Chine,  to  the  Bourg  of  St. 
Louis,  and  to  the  Indian  settlements  of  the  neighborhood,  where 
treating  on  a  large  scale  was  practiced.  But  though  Quebec  saw 
least  of,  and  profited  most  from,  the  actual  drinking,  it  was  acutely 
perturbed — being  the  headquarters  of  the  court  and  religious 
community — by  the  endless  controversy  which  had  divided  public 
opinion  ever  since  the  restoration  of  French  rule.  Champlain  had 
taken  the  side  of  the  traders.  The  Bishop  and  d'Argenson  fought 
over  the  question,  which  raged  fiercely  well  into  the  next  century. 
Till  the  Company  of  the  lOO  Associates  was  dissolved  in  1663  the 
Governor's  chief  function  was  to  protect  its  interests,  which  made 
it  difficult  for  him  to  be  a  disinterested  or  an  independent  ruler ; 
but  Courcelle,  Frontenac,  and  their  successors  were  at  liberty 
to  consult  the  commercial  interests  of  the  colony  at  large,  and 
their  judgment  may  therefore  fairly  be  regarded  as  impartial. 

D'Argenson  complained  that  the  Vicar  Apostolic  hurled  his 
excommunications  against  people  who  were  acting  in  conformity 
with  regulations  approved  by  the  civil  authorities.  D'Avaugour 
at  first  co-operated  with  Laval  in  his  efforts  to  suppress  the  liquor 
traffic  among  the  Indians,  but  afterwards,  exasperated  by  the 
interference  of  the  Jesuits  and  the  Bishop  in  matters  of  State, 
took  advantage,  as  we  have  seen,  of  the  inconsistency  of  the 
Jesuits,  in  pleading  for  a  woman  guilty  of  an  infraction  of  the 
liquor  law,  to  cancel  his  previous  prohibition.  He  also  quarreled 
with  Maisonneuve,  denying  his  right  as  Governor  of  Montreal 
to  make  prohibitive  regulations  in  Villemarie  opposed  to  his  own 
general  ordinance  as  Governor  of  the  whole  of  New  France. 
During  the  unhappy  rule  of  his  successor.  De  Mezy,  the  same 
confusion  prevailed,  the  authority  of  the  Governor  General  being 
arrayed  against  that  of  the  priests  of  St.  Sulpice.  who,  as  sci^i^uciirs 
of  Montreal,  were  its  actual  rulers,  the  local  Governor  at  the 
time  we  speak  of,  and  till  some  years  later,  being  their  nominee. 

Laval  left  his  diocese  in  1662  to  plead  his  cause  and  secure 
the  dismissal  of  the  obnoxious  d'Avaugonr.  During  hi?  absence 
the  excommunications  continued  to  be  promulgated,  to  the  dis- 
organization of  all  good  government,  against  men  who  were  in 


454  QUEBEC   IX   THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

no  sense  violating  the  law.  That  the  Church  was  right  in  oppos- 
ing the  abuses  connected  with  the  liquor  trade  few  could  deny ; 
that  its  methods  were  wise  and  patriotic  only  partisans  will  con- 
tend ;  but  matters  were  rapidly  approaching  the  point  where  the 
conflicting  views  of  statesmen  and  priests  could  not  fail  to 
cause  serious  social  disturbance.  The  growth  of  commerce 
consequent  upon  the  cancellation  of  the  exclusive  rights  of  the 
old  Company  of  One  Hundred  Associates,  the  influence  of  the 
correspondence  of  the  military  and  civil  officers  on  the  French 
court,  and  the  increasing  public  irritation  against  the  intolerant 
attitude  of  the  Church,  all  had  their  eflFect  on  Talon,  who,  in  1668, 
just  before  retiring  from  office  for  the  first  time,  suspended  the 
existing  provisions  against  the  sale  of  liquor  to  the  Indians.  The 
Council  confirmed  the  Intendant's  action,  giving  as  a  reason  that 
it  was  the  King's  desire  that  the  French  and  the  savages  should 
live  in  closer  intercourse,  and  that  brandy  was  the  best  pledge  of 
friendship.  No  prohibitory  edicts  could  be  enforced.  It  must  be 
borne  in  mind  that  the  conrcurs  dc  bois  practically  refused  to  obey 
either  priest  or  King,  and  that  there  was  no  police  and  no  court  in 
the  depth  of  the  forest  either  to  collect  evidence  against,  or  to  con- 
vict, those  independent  rovers.  Moreover,  the  prohibitive  ordi- 
nances merely  encouraged  smuggling  and  illicit  trade,  crimes  both 
of  which  could  be  practiced  almost  with  impunity  in  a  wilder- 
ness like  Canada,  wdth  thousands  of  miles  of  open  frontier  and 
keen  Yankee  traders  on  the  other  side  of  an  ambiguous  dividing 
line.  The  same  conditions  rendered  inoperative  all  laws  for- 
bidding brandy  to  be  taken  into  the  woods,  after  it  had  been 
made  illegal  to  sell  it  to  the  Indians  in  the  settlements.  Laval,  as 
member  of  the  Council,  had  been  present  at  the  meeting  in  which  it 
was  ridiculously  pretended  that  brandy  was  to  bind  the  colony 
to  the  Indians  in  an  alliance  of  perpetual  amity  and  good  will ; 
but  he  refused  to  sign  the  edict,  and  continued  to  excommunicate 
and  punish  with  all  the  pains  and  penalties  of  the  Church  those 
who  disobeyed  his  orders. 

Talon  left  finally  for  France  in  November,  1672,  two  months 
after  the  arrival  of  Frontenac :  and  until  Duchesneau  came  to  the 
country,    nearly   three   years    later,    on    the    i6th    of    September, 


A    ?vrASTF.RFi;L    r.()\-KRXOR.  455 

1675,  Frontenac  filled  the  functions  of  Governor  and  comniantler- 
in-chief  of  the  army,  as  well  as  those  of  Intendant.  During  these 
three  years,  therefore,  he  governed  with  fewer  trammels  than 
any  of  his  predecessors  or  successors.  The  absence  of  the  Bishop 
from  the  country  removed  the  only  check  which  might  have  been 
placed  upon  his  arbitrary  temper.  He  was  thus  for  a  time 
left  free  in  the  fullest  sense,  and  he  ruled  with  a  high  hand  ;  im- 
prisoning priests  in  spite  of  the  capitularies  and  canon  law  ;  seizing 
and  incarcerating  the  local  Governor  of  Montreal ;  packing  the 
sovereign  council  with  his  own  appointees  ;  refusing  to  allow  the 
Bishop's  Vicar  General  to  occupy  his  seat  in  the  Council ;  planning 
a  campaign  and  collecting  men  and  supplies  on  the  most  approved 
system  of  commandeering ;  caring  as  little  for  the  Bishop's  an- 
athema as  for  public  approval  or  disapproval ;  doing  what  he 
thought  best  for  the  general  good  and  safety  of  the  colony,  with- 
out considering  too  carefully  whether  his  action  would  be  sanc- 
tioned by  the  Court  and  minister.  What  mattered  that  ?  He 
v^as  doing  what  he  deemed  right,  and  the  disapproval  of  his 
acts  could  only  be  received  from  France  eight  months  afterwards. 
We  may  be  thankful  we  are  not  victims  of  his  arbitrary  will ;  Init 
looking  back,  the  fierce  and  undaunted  visage  of  the  veteran  war- 
rior, and  the  austere  form  of  his  adversary,  the  Bishop,  stand 
out  as  the  most  imposing  and  impressive  figures  among  that 
group  of  seventeenth  century  heroes,  who  stood  on  the  rock  of 
Quebec,  framed  by  the  impenetrable  forests,  and  washed  by  the 
mysterious  and  majestic  river,  whose  source  the  black-robed 
priests  were  the  first  of  their  race  to  explore. 

We  mav  blame  the  governor  for  assuming  powers  with  which 
he  was  not  legally  invested,  and  we  may  blame  the  Bishop  for 
wielding  unmercifully  the  terrible  weapons  the  Church  put  into 
his  hands;  but  wdio  dare  charge  either  with  false  or  sordid 
motives?  The  insinuations  made  against  Frontenac  that  he 
colluded  with  the  courciirs  dc  hois:  that  he  shared  in  the  profits  of 
illicit  traders ;  that  he  founded  the  fort  of  Frontenac  simply  as  a 
trading  post  in  the  interest  of  himself  and  his  partner,  T>a  Salle; 
that  his  violent  measures  against  Perrot,  the  Governor  of  Mont- 
real, grew  out  of  I'ealousv  of  a  commercial  rival,  who  occupied  a 


45^  QUEBEC    IX    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

commanding  commercial  position  ;  that  he  approved  of  the  sale 
of  liquor  to  the  Indians,  not  so  much  because  it  assisted  trade 
at  large,  as  because  it  advanced  his  own  private  interests ;  that 
he  introduced  the  system  of  permits  merely  to  prevent  the  priests 
investigating  his  nefarious  trading  operations ;  that  his  bitter 
dislike  to  the  Church  and  all  its  clergy,  except  the  RecoUet  friars, 
originated  in  selfish  motives — all  these  aspersions  find  their  only 
justification  in  the  innuendos  of  that  inveterate  gossip.  Saint 
Simon,  and  the  charges  of  his  bitter  enemy  and  underhanded  fel- 
low-ofificial  Duchesneau.  Saint  Simon's  accusation  rests  on  the 
unproved  allegation  that  Frontenac,  who  had  left  France  poor, 
returned  rich.  Had  that  been  true,  and  had  he  used  his  official 
position  during  the  first  administration  to  fill  his  purse,  is  it  likely 
that,  during  his  second  term  of  rule,  he  would  have  continued  to 
live  in  the  tumble-down  old  Chateau,  hardly  protected  from  the 
weather,  while  the  few^  thousand  francs  which  he  pleaded  for 
from  France  w'ere  being  tardily  contributed  for  its  reconstruction  ? 

Considering  that  the  brandy  war  raged  during  the  whole  of  his 
administration,  the  wonder  is  that  so  few  charges  were  made 
against  him.  The  controversy  assumed  its  acutest  phase  when  the 
Bishop  emphasized  his  protest  against  the  traffic  by  making  it 
a  cas  reserve,  thus  removing  it  from  the  sphere  of  all  civil 
or  legislative  action  and  sent  his  most  diplomatic  priest.  Father 
Dudouyt,  to  Paris,  to  plead  his  cause  before  the  Court. 

The  Intendant  Duchesneau  recommended  Dudouyt  to  Colbert ; 
Frontenac,  of  course,  did  what  he  could  in  the  opposite  direction. 
On  April  27th,  1677,  Bishop  Laval's  delegate  was  granted  an 
audience  bv  the  minister,  who  insisted  that  the  clergy  of  Canada 
must  confine  themselves  to  their  proper  ecclesiastical  functions, 
and  not  interfere  with  matters  of  state  policy.  The  priest,  of 
course,  argued  that  a  practice  detrimental  to  man's  body  and 
ruinous  to  his  soul,  fell  within  their  province ;  that  it  had  been 
pronounced  so  by  the  highest  ecclesiastical  authorities :  that  it 
was  held  to  be  so  by  God's  agent,  the  Bishop,  who  was  respon- 
sible for  the  salvation  of  his  flock ;  and  that  no  prohibition  or 
persecution  could  make  him  or  his  clergy  swerve  from  their  duty. 
Thev  parted  as  they  had  met — the  minister  firm  in  his  determina- 


THE   QUESTION    DEBATED    I X    IKAXCE.  ^57 

tion  to  support  his  subordinate,  the  Governcjr,  the  priest  unmoved 
by  the  displeasure  of  the  great  man. 

But  though  Frontenac  in  the  wilds  of  Canada  was  willing  to 
risk  the  displeasure  and  the  censure  of  the  Church,  the  minister, 
in  his  very  different  sphere  of  action,  did  not  consider  it  ]')olitic  to 
do  so.  That  the  Church  was  in  earnest  in  the  matter  was 
evidenced  by  the  fact  that  Colbert's  confessor  refused  him  absolu- 
tion because  he  had  decided  with  the  Governor  against  the  Bishop. 
In  another  interview  with  the  priest  the  minister  pointed  out  that, 
by  making  the  sale  of  brandy  to  the  Indians  a  cas  reserve,  and 
hurling  excommunications  right  and  left,  for  a  practice  accepted 
as  legitimate  in  white  communities,  the  Bishop  was  bringing  the 
Church  into  discredit.  Mons.  Dudouyt  saw  that  he  could  not 
carry  his  point  and  secure  prohibition,  especially  as  Talon  was 
in  France,  and  had  the  full  confidence  of  the  minister.  Talon,  in 
1668,  argued,  as  d'Argenson  had  done,  when  he  persuaded  the 
Council  to  pass  his  obnoxious  edict,  that  it  was  unjust  to  make 
unequal  laws.  Mons.  Dudouyt  therefore  shifted  his  ground,  and 
pleaded  for  some  measure  which  would  minimize  the  evil,  if  not 
extirpate  it.  At  the  same  time  he  wrote  to  the  Bishop  asking  him 
to  send  over  by  the  first  ship  a  well-authenticated  statement  of 
facts  regarding  the  liquor  question,  and  begging  him  most  earn- 
estly in  the  meantime  not  to  irritate  Colbert  by  further  excommuni- 
cations. The  Bishop  followed  the  advice  of  his  representative,  and 
sent  a  statement,  which,  while  it  did  not  entirely  convince  the 
King,  impressed  him  so  deeply,  that  he  instructed  Frontenac  in 
conjunction  with  the  Council,  to  call  together  twenty  of  the  oldest 
and  most  influential  inhabitants,  and  ascertain  their  views  on 
the  vexed  question.  The  committee  met  in  October,  1678.  and 
drafted  a  report  on  the  26th  of  that  month,  which  was  emphat- 
ically in  favor  of  free  trade  in  spirituous  liquors.  The  members 
of  the  committee,  though  not  wholly  disinterested — seeing  that, 
apart  from  the  priests,  nearly  every  prominent  man  in  the  country 
had  some  direct  or  indirect  concern  in  the  liquor  trade — were  all 
notable  and  honorable  men,  and  their  report,  which  was  almost 
unanimous,  if  it  did  not  fully  prove  the  correctness  of  their  deci- 
sion, at  least  relieved  Talon,  Frontenac  and  others,  who  had  taken 


458        QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

up  a  position  opposed  to  the  Jesuits  and  the  Bishop,  from  the 
odium  of  having  acted  from  purely  private  and  interested  mo- 
tives.* The  weight  of  public  opinion  was  decidedly  upon  their 
side.  The  Council  transmitted,  by  the  hands  of  Mons.  Dupont 
and  Mons.  de  Peyras,  the  report  with  all  the  documents  asked  for 
by  the  King.  The  representatives  who  took  the  report  to  France 
were  known  to  be  hostile  to  the  Bishop's  views  and  pretensions 
and  therefore,  feeble  and  suffering  though  he  was,  the  prelate  took 
ship  at  once  to  plead  in  person  the  cause  of  his  Indian  flock,  and 
expose  what  he  persisted  were  the  sordid  motives  of  his  opponents. 

On  his  arrival  in  P'"rance  he  was  persuaded  by  Alons.  Dudouyt 
to  abate  his  extreme  demands,  and  in  his  interview  with  the  King 
he  merely  asked  that  an  edict  should  be  issued  prohibiting  the 
carrying  of  licjuors  by  white  hunters  or  traders  into  the  woods,  as 
an  article  of  barter  with  the  Indians,  and  the  selling  of  brandy  to 
the  Indians  in  their  villages.  The  King  was  so  impressed  with 
the  Bishop's  description  of  tlie  injury  done  both  to  red  men  and 
to  white  men  by  the  traffic  in  brandy  that  he  submitted  the  ques- 
tion to  his  confessor,  Pere  La  Chaise,  and  the  Archbishop  of  Paris, 
who  joined  in  recommending  him  to  issue  an  edict  in  conformity 
with  the  Bishop's  moderated  proposal.  This  was  done,  and  the 
Bishop  professed  himself  satisfied. 

He  cannot  be  considered  to  have  won  a  victory,  and  in  point 
of  fact  the  slight  restrictions  imposed  on  the  liquor  traffic  were  of 
little  avail  in  arresting  the  evil.  Shortly  afterward,  in  1682,  both 
Frontenac  and  the  Intendant  Duchcsneau  were  recalled ;  and  the 


*La  Salle,  in  his  evidence  on  the  brandy  question,  as  a  member  of  the 
special  council  called  to  report  upon  the  subject,  says  that  the  sale  of 
beaver  skins  reaches  60,000  to  80,000,  and  that  the  savages  who  buy  brandy 
number  about  20,000,  and  that  there  is  usually  giv^en  for  a  skin  one  chopine 
of  brandy;  and  if,  therefore,  every  Indian  drinks  only  his  choline  of  brandy 
per  year,  he  is  not  much  the  worse,  and  the  country  secures  one-quarter  or 
one-third  of  all  the  beaver  skins  bought.  The  opinion  of  each  of  the  dele- 
gates is  given  separately.  All  are  in  favor  of  the  sale  of  brandy,  but 
Joliet  opposes  its  sale  in  the  woods,  and  would  restrict  the  sale  to  the 
settlements.  Margry  I,  page  145.  Proccs  Z'crbal  dc  VAsscmbU'c  tcnuc  an 
chateau  dc  Sanit-Loiiis  dc  Quebec  Ics  10  octnbic.  i6y8.  cf  joins  suirants, 
an  sujet  des  boissons  cnyvrantes  aue  I'on  traite  aux  Sauvages. 


LAVAL  RESIGNS  HIS  SEE.  459 

brandy  question  was  almost  forgotten  in  the  calamities  which 
before  long  overtook  the  colony,  and  which  popular  opinion  attrib- 
uted so  decidedly  to  the  absence  of  their  former  vigorous  Gov- 
ernor, that  no  other  course  seemed  possible  but  to  send  him  back 
to  Canada  in  1689. 

Meanwhile  the  advance  of  age  and  his  increasing  infirmities 
had  compelled  Bishop  Laval  to  lay  down  the  burden  of  ecclesias- 
tical and  civil  work,  which  he  had  by  voluntary  assumption  made 
very  heavy.  It  was  now  his  turn  to  smart  under  a  ruling  which 
he  did  not  venture  to  disobey,  and  at  the  author  of  which  it  would 
have  been  rash  to  attempt  to  hurl  an  excommunication.  In  1687, 
after  his  retirement  from  the  active  exercise  of  his  episcopal 
functions,  and  while  waiting  in  Paris  for  the  acceptance  of 
his  resignation  by  the  King  and  the  papal  bull  appointing  his 
successor,  serious  divergence  of  opinion  occurred  between  himself 
and  the  Bishop-elect,  Saint  Vallier,  respecting  the  management  of 
the  Quebec  seminary.  It  was  drifting  into  bankruptcy,  and  the 
Bishop,  aged  and  ill  though  he  was,  decided  to  return  to  Canada 
to  adjust  the  alifairs  of  this  institution  founded  by  himself  and  so 
verv  dear  to  his  heart.  He  would  then  be  willing  to  die  in  his 
adopted  country,  and  be  buried  in  the  chapel  of  his  own  erection, 
where  masses  would  perpetually  be  said  for  the  repose  of  his  soul 
by  a  succession  of  priests,  for  whose  education,  comfort  and  sup- 
port provision  had  been  made  by  his  pious  forethought,  and  whd 
would  naturally  hold  his  memory  in  deep  regard.  To  his  dismay, 
he  was  forbidden  by  the  King,  through  the  Marquis  de  Seignelay, 
to  return,  on  the  plea  that  his  presence  in  Canada  would  cause 
dissension.  The  old  man  wrote  a  dignified,  though  i)lea(ling,  letter 
to  the  minister,  but  obeyed.  Twenty-eight  years  of  experience 
of  active  life  and  of  the  exigencies  of  statecraft  may  have  taught 
him  moderation,  and  raised  a  doubt  in  his  mind  as  to  the  wisdom 
and  righteousness  on  the  part  of  fallible  man  of  appl\-ing  any 
principles  so  severely  and  uncompromisingl\-  as  he  himself  had 
been  in  the  habit  of  doing. 

The  prohibition  was  removed  as  soon  as  his  successor  was 
consecrated,  and  on  J"ne  3rd,  1688,  he  landed  for  the  last  time  at 
Quebec,  to  the  infinite  joy  of  the  whole  population;  for,  though 


460  (JUEUEC    IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

they  may  liave  opposed  his  interference  in  purely  civil  affairs,  and 
deprecated  the  friction  which  it  created,  all  recognized  the  sin- 
cerity of  his  devotion,  not  only  to  the  infant  church,  but  to  the 
colony,  and  were  especially  hearty  in  their  approval  of  his  founda- 
tion of  a  seminary  capable  of  providing  an  education  for  a  secular 
clergy,  drawn  from  the  ranks  of  the  people  themselves. 

After  the  Bishop  and  the  Count  had  both  gone  to  their 
rest  there  was  still  friction  between  Church  and  State,  but  the 
quarrels  were  reduced  to  bickerings.  The  never-settled  question 
of  precedence  continued  to  give  trouble.  Whether  Bishop  Saint 
Vallier  would  admit  the  Governor,  Vaudreuil,  to  the  sanctuary,  or 
permit  him  to  dip  his  finger  into  the  holy  water,  instead  of  being 
sprinkled  like  the  common  folk,  or  whether  the  Carignan-Saliere 
Regiment  was  in  its  proper  position  in  the  Recollet  Church  in 
Montreal — these  and  similar  subjects  of  dispute,  however  they  may 
have  agitated  the  minds  of  those  immediately  concerned,  had  little 
interest  for  the  public.  The  country  was  growing,  and  matters  of 
more  importance  were  claiming  attention.  A  noisy  controversy 
raged  as  to  the  proper  and  rightful  position  of  the  captains  of 
militia  in  the  church  processions,  till  a  royal  decree  settled  the 
order  in  which  the  various  dignitaries  were  to  be  marshalled  and 
to  walk.  Utterly  trifling  as  these  questions  were,  they  had  to  be 
settled  by  the  King,  for  under  the  rigid  system  of  centralization, 
which  Colbert  had  inaugurated,  all  these  ignoble  details  were 
reported  to,  and  passed  upon  by,  the  overworked  monarch  and  his 
minister  in  the  cabinet.  Louis  XIV.  would  have  needed  to  be,  as 
he  actually  regarded  himself,  an  incarnation  of  deity,  to  be  able 
to  examine  and  decide  such  an  infinitude  of  questions  as  were 
presented  to  him  for  settlement  by  his  officials  at  home  and  abroad. 
Well  might  Michelet  say,  "He  who  grasps  at  too  much  can  see 
nothing."  Matters  of  importance  are  not  recognized  as  such 
when  the  mind  is  distracted  by  trifles.  If  the  same  mind  which 
shapes  and  directs  the  policy  of  the  State  has  also  to  pass  judg- 
ment upon  the  shortcomings  of  a  nun  or  the  promotion  of  a  can- 
noneer, there  is  great  danger  that  the  larger  interests  will  at  times 
be  sacrificed  to  the  smaller.  After  the  century  closed  the  people  of 
the  colon v  were  endowed  with  no  sfreater  control  over  their  own 


CLOSING   OF   THE    IIKROIC    AGE.  461 

affairs  than  they  had  enjoyed  before,  and,  if  we  except  the  Intend- 
ant  Hocquart,  no  man  of  the  stamp  of  Frontenac  and  Laval  was 
sent  to  rule  over  them.  With  the  disappearance  of  these  two 
majestic  figures  from  the  drama  of  Canadian  history,  the  interest 
of  the  plot  languishes,  and  the  story  drags  on  towards  a  miserable 
ending, 


CHAPTER   XXVI. 
Quebec  as  the  Seat  of  Clerical  and  Lay  Education. 

Quebec  may  claim  the  credit  of  occupying  a  prominent  place 
as  one  of  the  first  seats  of  learning  on  the  Continent.  In  the 
City  of  Mexico  was  built  the  first  University,  created  by  Royal 
Charter  in  155 1^  but  it  was  planned  and  erected  on  so  sumptuous 
a  scale  that  the  century  was  closing  before  it  was  opened. 

Harvard  dates  its  birth  from  1640,  when  the  school  developed 
into  the  College,  b}-  the  aid  of  the  Rev.  John  Harvard's  gift  of 
£i^'joo  and  his  library  of  260  volumes,  the  object  of  which  was 
''to  advance  learning  and  perpetuate  it  to  posterity."  the  testator 
"dreading  to  have  an  illiterate  ministry  to  the  Churches,  when  its 
present  ministers  shall  lie  in  the  dust." 

It  was  twenty-seven  years  later  before  the  older  colony  of 
Virginia,  through  the  perserverance  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Blair,  came 
to  possess  the  William  and  ^lary  College;  and  sixty-one  years 
after  the  foundation  of  Harvard,  Yale  was  opened  with  the 
avowed  purpose  of  making  it  a  training  school  for  ministers. 

The  first  schoolmaster  in  Canada  was  the  Recollet  Brother 
Pacifique,  who  taught  some  little  savages  at  Three  Rivers  as 
early  as  161 6;  the  second  was  Father  Le  Caron.  of  the  same 
order,  who  two  years  afterward  opened  a  school  in  Tadousac. 
The  monks  of  Saint  Francis,  had  their  means  been  sufficient,  might 
have  established  the  Seminary  at  Quebec,  which  their  general 
Sjaidic,  M.  Charles  de  Bolies,  recognized  as  an  essential  adjunct  to 
missionary  work;  but,  once  the  Jesuits  entered  the  field,  higher 
education  was  felt  to  be  rightfully  within  their  province.  When 
the  Jesuits  returned  to  Canada  without  the  Recollets,  after  the 
Restoration,  Father  Le  Jeune  promptly  opened  school  with  two 
scholars,  and  in  1635  the  Society  built  a  schoolhouse,  in  which 
they  tried  the  co-education  of  white    and  red    boys    with   very 


CENSUS    OF    1681.  463 

indififcrent  success.  At  first  the  teaching  was  of  an  elementary 
character,  but  in  twenty  years  the  school  had  developed  into 
a  college,  with  a  teaching  staff  which  included  professors  of 
grammar,  rhetoric,  philosophy  and  the  humanities.  The  Jesuit 
college,  as  a  college,  was  virtually  extinguished  by  the  conquest 
of  Canada  in  1759,  from  which  date  the  Lesser  Seminary,  organ- 
ized by  Bishop  Laval,  whose  pupils  had  previously  received  in- 
struction in  the  Jesuit  College,  became  a  teaching  institution  and 
preserved  the  continuity  of  college  education.  Education,  in  fact, 
occupied  the  energies  of  a  large  proportion  of  the  inhabitants 
of  the  little  town,  nor  were  women  overlooked. 

The  Census  of  1681,  after  enumerating  the  Establishment  of 
the  Governor  as  twenty-one  persons,  that  of  the  Intendant  at  ten 
and  the  military  force  at  twenty-one,  gives  in  detail  the  staff  of 
the  Seminary,  the  Jesuit  College,  the  Recollet  Monastery  and  the 
nunneries : 

In  the  Seminary  were 

Monseigneur    the    Bishop,    M.    de    Bernieres,    the 

Superior,   23    Priests 25 

Boarders 20 

Male    servants 18 

Wives  and  daughters  of  the  servants 4 

4  cows,  2  horses,  i  ass,  at  the  farm  of  60  arpents. 
The  Household  of  the  Jesuits  consisted  of 

Priests   8 

Brothers    7 

*Frcrcs  doiiucs.  or  lay  servants  under  vows 4 

*  Freres  Donnes  were  laymen  who  pledged  themselves  to  serve  for 
life  without  other  remuneration  than  their  maintenance,  in  whatever  class 
of  labor  might  be  imposed  on  them.  The  members  of  this  lay  order,  as  first 
organized  to  assist  the  missionaries,  took  a  vow  of  service  and  wore  a 
religious  habit :  and  on  the  other  hand  the  Society  undertook  to  maintain 
them  till  death,  without  any  reservation.  The  Jesuit  authorities  in  Rome 
refused  to  sanction  the  formation  of  what  was  substantially  a  sub-order; 
hut  when  Father  Lalemant  proposed  to  abolish  the  habit,  and  to  relieve  the 
Society  from  the  obligation  of  perpetual  maintenance,  by  claiming  the  right 
to  discharge  an  unworthy  servant,  the  General  Vitelleschi  permitted  the 
institution  of  this  class  of  lay  helpers,  who  were  most  useful  in  the  western 
mission  stations. 


464  QUEUEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTUARY. 

Servants  not  under  vows 10 

The  number  of  pupils  is  not  given. 
In  the  Recollet  Monastery  were 

Monks    7 

Frercs   donncs 3 

Wife  of  Frere  Donne  Guibault. 
4  oxen,  4  cows,  i  horse  on  the  farm  of  30  acres. 
The  Convent  of  the  HospitaUeres  (The  Hotel  Dieu  Hospital) 
had  on  its  staff  of  nurses: 

Mothers    19 

Sisters    9 

As  boarders  were  Madame  d'Aillebout,  the  widow  of  the  ex-gov- 
ernor, and  her  servant  Edme  Chastel.  The  good  lady  had  twice 
entered  the  Ursuline  Convent — once  during  her  husband's  life, 
with  his  consent,  and  again  after  his  death  :  but  her  resolution 
was  not  equal  to  her  piety,  and  the  seclusion  of  the  nunnery 
taxed  beyond  power  of  endurance  her  active  temperament,  which 
found  a  more  congenial  sphere  of  duty  in  the  Hospital. 
In  the  service  of  the  Hospital  were : 

Male    servants 23 

Female    i 

and  the  live  stock  on  their  farm  of  150  arpents,  consisted  of  30 
horned  cattle,  40  calves  and  40  sheep. 
The  Ursuline  Nunnery  harbored  : 

Mothers    22 

Sisters    "7 

French    boarders 17 

Indian    boarders 10 

On  the  farm  of  200  acres  were  4  male  servants,  40  head  of 
cattle,  3  horses  and   13  sheep. 

Thus,  to  minister  to  the  spiritual  wants  and  to  the  educa- 
tion of  its  male  population,  there  were  in  Quebec  47  ordained 
priests  and  friars  ;  29  Ursuline  nuns  taught  the  girls,  and  there 
were  39  mothers  and  sisters  in  the  Hos]:)ital.  In  the  five  religious 
houses  there  were  104  priests  and  nuns  under  solemn  vows,  and 
they  employed  in  the  service  of  their  households  and  farms  some 
67  men  and  women.     Of  the  population,  therefore,  of  1345  over 


THE  URSULINE   CONVENT.  465 

12  per  cent  was  engaged  directly  or  indirectly  in  religious,  edu- 
cational or  hospital  service. 

The  Ursuline  nuns  then  as  now  taught  day  scholars  as  well 
as  boarders,  and  their  school  at  that  date  was  the  only  agency  for 
imparting  female  education.  Though,  as  we  have  seen,  they  had 
on  their  roll  ten  little  savages,  the  hope  with  which  Madame 
de  la  Peltrie  and  her  friend  Mere  Marie  de  1' Incarnation  had 
founded  the  nunnery,  that  it  would  be  a  training  school  for 
Indian  girls,  whom  they  wished  to  fit  for  becoming  the  wives 
of  French  bachelors,  was  fading  year  by  year.  Experience  showed 
that  French  husbands  were  more  prone  to  follow  their  squaws 
into  the  forest  than  the  squaws  were  to  settle  down  into  French 
housewives.  Nevertheless  Frontenac  himself  still  cherished  the 
belief  that  he  could  win  the  western  tribes  over  to  the  French  side 
by  nobler  motives  than  the  mere  desire  of  gain,  and  in  his  cortege 
from  Fort  Frontenac  there  were  generally  some  Indian  girls 
whom  he  was  bringing  to  Quebec  to  be  educated  and  civilized 
by  the  Ursulines. 

The  standard  of  female  education  was  not  high  in  those 
days.  Mere  Marie  de  ITncarnation  said  in  i66t  :  "Some  pupils 
remain  six  or  seven  years,  others  in  the  short  space  of  twelve 
months  must  be  taught  their  prayers,  reading,  writing,  and  arith- 
metic, and  the  Church's  doctrines  and  morals,  in  short,  all  that 
is  most  essential  in  the  education  of  females.''  But  if  the  girls 
were  not  crammed  with  learning,  they  were  taught  the  exquisite 
graces  of  courtesy  and  reverence  for  holy  things,  whicli,  grafted 
on  their  native  vivacity,  excited  the  admiration  and  respect  of 
such  gallants  as  La  Hontan  and  such  grave'  savants  as  Kalm  : 
and  which  became  so  deeply  implanted  in  their  natures  that  it  is 
inherited  by  their  sisters  to-day. 

It  is  sad  to  record  that  the  good  ladies  had  to  bear  more  than 
their  share  of  calamities.  A  second  fire  broke  out  while  the 
nuns  and  their  pupils  were  at  mass  on  Sunday  morning,  Oct.  20. 
1686,  It  destroyed  the  nunnery  with  its  valuable  records,  and  the 
chapel,  sparing  only  Madame  de  la  Peltrie's  house.  Misfortune, 
however,  only  stimulated  their  ardor  and  the  interest  of  others 
in  their  work ;  for,  on  the  reopening  of  the  convent  after  the  fire, 


466  QUEliEC    IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

just  half  a  century  after  the  members  of  the  order  first  landed  in 
Canada,  the  community  numbered  34  members,  devoted  exclusively 
to  education  in  Quebec.  Yet  they  were  prepared  for  other  tasks 
when  called  upon,  for,  as  we  read,  the  convent  consented  to  spare 
some  of  their  members  to  undertake  the  duty  of  nurses,  in 
the  nunnery  established  in  1697  in  Three  Rivers,  where  the 
population  was  too  small  to  support  both  a  school  and  a  hospital. 
The  Court  at  Versailles  did  not  look  with  favor  on  this  multipli- 
cation of  conventual  establishments,  and  the  King,  while  not  refus- 
ing permission  to  open  the  Convent  at  Three  Rivers,  declined  to 
confer  on  it  Letters  Patent.  In  the  same  dispatch  he  commented 
with  disapproval  on  Bishop  Saint  \^allier's  plan  of  putting  the 
General  Hospital  in  charge  of  a  separate  community  of  the  Hos- 
pitalieres,  and  insisted  that  it  should  be  subject  to  the  Inspector 
of  Hospitals. 

While  in  Paris  in  1663,  or  eight  years  after  the  opening  of 
the  Jesuit  College  in  Quebec,  and  twenty-three  years  after  Presi- 
dent Dunster  was  inducted  as  principal  of  Harvard,  Bishop  Laval, 
took  the  step  of  creating  by  Letters  Episcopal  the  Seminary  of 
Quebec  for  the  theological  education  o'f  the  clergy  of  Canada. 
The  King  con'firmed  this  act,  by  letters  patent,  of  date  April  30, 
1663,  and  the  Bishop  landed  in  Quebec  in  September  of  the  same 
year,  accompanied  or  preceded  by  M.  M.  de  Maizerct,  Pommier, 
Dudouyt,  de  Bernieres,  Lechevalier  and  Forest,  who  had  been 
engaged  to  perform  clerical  functions  and  to  conduct  his  contem- 
plated seminary. 

The  intention  of  the  founder  was  that  the  Seminary  should  be 
an  establishment  in  which  young  clerics,  "who  might  be  judged  fit 
for  the  service  of  God.  should  be  educated  and  trained.  And  to 
that  end  they  should  be  instructed  in  the  manner  of  administering 
the  sacraments  and  the  methods  of  catechising  and  preaching 
apostolically :  also  should  be  taught  moral  theology,  the  cere- 
monies of  the  Church,  the  plain  Gregorian  Chant,  and  whatever 
other  studies  are  necessary  to  fit  them  for  fulfilling  well  the 
duties  of  the  priesthood." 

The  Jesuit  College  was  already  giving  the  community  advanced 
training  in  secular  learning,  and  its  course  of  preliminary  studies 


THE  QUEBEC  SEMINARY.  467 

was  adapted  to  those  proposing  to  enter  the  Churcli  and  undertake 
pastoral  work.  Bishop  Laval,  when  he  founded  the  Greater  Semi- 
nary, confined  the  instruction  given  hy  its  professors  to  purely 
theological  and  ritual  suhjects,  entrusting  the  instruction  of  his 
future  clergy  in  secular  suhjects  to  the  ahle  hands  of  the  Jesuits. 
Even  after  the  Lesser  Seminary  was  estahlished,  it  was  first  used 
more  as  a  boarding  house  than  as  a  complete  educational  establish- 
ment. The  Church  draws  a  distinction  between  education  and 
instruction.  As  an  educator  it  exercises,  in  its  educational  estab- 
lishments, constant  supervision  over  its  youth;  it  studies  the 
idiosyncrasies  of  each  of  its  younger  members,  endeavoring  to 
repress  all  evil,  and  to  foster  and  develop  all  virtuous,  tendencies. 
Li  its  seminaries,  and  even  in  the  Universities  under  its  control, 
a  much  stricter  watch  is  kept  over  the  pupils,  and  much  less 
latitude  of  action  and  study  is  allowed  to  them,  than  in  Protestant 
schools  and  colleges.  The  Lesser  Seminary  of  Quebec,  which 
Bishop  Laval  opened  in  1668,  was  in  this  sense,  up  to  the  date 
of  the  Conquest,  more  an  educational  than  a  teaching  institution, 
confining  itself  to  the  religious  and  elementary  training  of  its 
pupils,  the  regulation  of  their  morals,  and  the  direction  of  their 
natural  tendencies.  To  the  Jesuits,  in  their  better  equipped  col- 
lege, was  entrusted  instruction  in  secular  subjects  and  the  intel- 
lectual development  of  the  seminarists.  The  Lesser  Seminary 
(still  Le  Petit  Seminaire)  became  also  a  training  school  for  the 
priesthood,  though  it  originated  in  a  different  manner. 

The  first  impulse  towards  its  establishment  came  from  France, 
when  Colbert  communicated  to  the  Bishop  the  King's  earnest 
desire  that  the  Christian  Indians  should  be  Frenchified,  and  his 
opinion  that  this  could  best  be  done  by  teaching  Indian  boys  the 
French  language  and  French  manners.  The  most  Christian  King 
was  liberal  with  his  theories  and  his  advice,  but  stingy  when 
asked  to  pay  for  carrying  them  into  practice.  The  Jesuits  had 
essayed  in  vain  to  civilize  and  denationalize  the  Indians  more  than 
thirty  years  before,  and  they  wisely  declined  to  attem])t  the  exper- 
iment again.  Whether  Bishop  Laval  believed  or  not  in  the  i^ossi- 
!)ilitv  of  success,  the  King  had  commanded,  and  like  a  loyal  old 
noble  he  obeyed,  and  opened  the  Petit  Seminaire  on  Oct.  9th,  1668, 


408  QUEBEC   IX   THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

with  8  French  and  6  Huron  pupils.  The  number  of  the  former 
grew;  that  of  the  latter  declined,  till,  in  1673,  the  last  one  was 
removed  by  his  parents. 

Subsequently,  and  till  the  Conquest,  as  already  mentioned,  the 
pupils  of  the  Lesser  Seminary  received  their  instruction  in  tlic 
Jesuit  College  on  the  other  side  of  the  Market  Place.  But  the 
former  institution  was  the  source  whence  the  clergy  of  Lower 
Canada  were  selected,  and  such  it  remains  to  this  day.  Boys  enter 
it  young.  They  grow  up  under  the  closest  ecclesiastical  super- 
vision. Their  proclivities  are  closely  studied,  and  if  they  exhibit 
the  ability  and  disposition  held  to  be  desirable  in  a  priest,  they 
are  from  childhood  consecrated  to  God,  and  enveloped  in  the 
atmosphere  of  the  Church  ;  they  live,  move  and  have  their  very 
being  in  the  Seminary,  which  is  to  them  the  expression  of  the 
Church's  fostering  care.  Though  the  priesthood  has  thus  been 
drawn  from  its  pupils,  the  Lesser  Seminary  of  Quebec  has  none 
the  less  been  the  largest  general  elementary  school  in  the  Province ; 
and  from  it,  for  a  century  and  a  half,  all  the  professions  have 
drawn  into  their  special  schools  a  succession  of  children  thoroughly 
drilled  in  certain  branches. 

With  the  exception  of  the  Seminary  maintained  by  the  Sul- 
picians  in  Montreal,  the  Jesuit  College  was,  till  the  Conquest, 
practically  the  only  seat  of  learning  in  Canada  equipped  to  give 
a  general  education  and  train  priests  for  their  branch  of  the 
Church's  work.  Ferland  gives  the  number  of  students  at  the  Jesuit 
College  in  1668  as  120,  of  whom  60  were  boarders.  Lahontan, 
in  1684.  describes  the  College  as  so  small  that  it  could  accommo- 
date only  50  pupil-boarders  at  a  time,  and  La  Potherie  tells  us 
that  80  of  the  Jesuit  pupils  were  lodged  in  the  Seminary  opposite. 
These  were  really  youths  who  had  been  enrolled  at  the  Bishop's 
Seminary,  but  who  pursued  their  general  studies  at  the  College, 
where,  according  to  Bishop  Saint  A'allier,  they  acquired  as  great 
aptitude  and  facility  as  the  best  educated  youths  in  France. 

The  available  information  as  to  the  course  of  study  and 
the  manner  of  life  within  the  college  is  scanty.  The  latter 
has  probably  little  changed  in  similar  institutions  of  the  Order, 
even   to-day :   the   former   we   know   has   been   greatly   modified. 


THE    JESUIT    COLLEGE.  469 

Father  Rochemonteix,  in  his  Lcs  Jcsuitcs  ct  la  Xonvclle  France, 
has  collected  many  data,  which  we  have  freely  used. 

Before  Kirke's  conquest  Rene  Rohault  de  Gamache,  a  devotee 
and  afterwards  a  novice  and  a  priest  of  the  order,  gave  16,000 
fl.  gold  coin,  and  an  annual  rental  of  3,000  livres  to  found  and 
support  a  College  in  Quebec.  Political  complications,  however, 
and  the  fall  of  Quebec  prevented  the  realization  of  his  wish. 

Father  Lalemant  writes  to  the  General  Jean  Paul  Oliva : 
"The  thoughts  of  the  founder  can  be  expressed  in  few  words — 
to  aid  and  to  give  spiritual  instruction  to  the  Canadians." 

The  instruction  given  was  thus  undoubtedly  at  first  very  ele- 
mentary and  exclusively  religious,  but  in  time  Latin  came  to  be 
added,  for,  as  early  as  1641,  Mere  Marie  de  ITncarnation  says 
that  the  nuns  were  learning  to  speak  the  native  language,  but  that 
the  children  at  the  College  were  learning  Latin.  In  1651  P.  Ragu- 
eneau  reports  to  the  Superior  that,  besides  a  teacher  of  reading 
and  writing,  there  were  in  the  College  a  professor  of  grammar, 
another  of  mathematics,  and  16  scholars.  By  the  year  1655,  ir 
addition  to  the  masters  of  reading  and  writing,  there  were  pro- 
fessors of  philosophy,  grammar,  and  of  rhetoric  and  the  hu- 
manities. 

Elementary  mathematics  had  always  formed  a  subject  of  study, 
but  M.  Talon,  the  Intendant,  regarding  Canada  as  a  nursery  for 
the  Marine  of  France,  induced  the  Jesuits  to  open  a  class  for 
instruction  in  higher  mathematics  and  hydrography.  They  had 
among  their  number  a  layman  (Frere-donne  le  Sieur  de  Saint 
Martin)  fit  for  the  task,  who  became  the  precursor  of  a  line 
of  eminent  teachers  of  mathematics,  astronomy  and  navigation 
— all  Jesuit  Fathers — provided  by  the  King  with  apparatus  and 
supported  from  the  Royal  Treasury.  The  P.  Silvey  was  the 
first  who  held  the  post  officially,  and  P.  Charles  Misaigner  the 
last. 

The  curriculum  was  extended  when  Bishop  Laval  decided  ro 
educate  a  native  clergy,  and.  lacking  a  professional  stafif  of  his 
own,  requested  the  Jesuits  to  teach  Theology.  The  professors 
of  Philosophy  undertook  this  additional  duty,  for  M.  de  Beau- 
harnais  urg-es  that,  in  consideration  of  the  educational  services  of 


470  OUEDEC    I\    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURV. 

the  Jesuits,  the  State  pay  the  salary  of  300  Hvres  to  an  ackUtional 
professor  of  Philosophy.  The  reconiinendation  was  not  agreed 
to.  The  King  was  willing  to  pay  a  professor  of  Navigation,  but 
not  of  Philosophy,  for,  even  in  those  days,  there  were  advoeates 
of  a  practical  as  opposed  to  a  too  exclusively  theoretical  training. 
Theology  having  by  that  time  been  added  to  the  secular  course  of 
studies,  the  Jesuits  continued  to  educate  youths  for  the  priesthood 
long  after  the  Grand  Seniinaire  was  equipped.  Their  college 
maintained,  besides,  an  elementary  department,  for  P.  de  Lauzon, 
in  announcing  to  the  General  the  death  in  1734  of  Father  Gues- 
nier,  the  Professor  of  Philosophv  and  Theology,  mentions  that 
he  also  taught  the  catechism  in  the  Junior  school,  which  numbered 
over  100  children. 

To  this  College,  as  we  have  said,  the  Seminary  sent  its  pupils, 
down  to  the  date  of  the  Conquest.  M.  de  Champigny,  writing 
to  the  minister  in  1699,  says :  "The  Seminary  boards  40  or  50 
children,  some  of  whom  pay  fees,  while  others  are  supported 
gratuitously.  They  are  taught  all  branches,  from  the  elementary 
to  Theology,  in  the  schools  of  the  Jesuits,  whither  they  are  sent 
twice  a  day."  The  Jesuit  College,  when  in  full  operation  toward 
the  close  of  the  17th  and  in  the  beginning  of  the  i8th  century, 
was,  in  fact,  a  miniature  of  the  larger  colleges  of  the  order  in 
Europe. 

Rochemonteix  says  that,  according  to  the  correspondence  of  the 
Superior  preserved  in  the  general  archives,  the  principal  exercises 
apart  from  the  lectures  of  the  professors,  were  Ics  Repetitions, 
la  Sabbatine,  et  les  Meiistrnales.  The  Repetitions  were  held  daily. 
Every  Saturday,  and  at  the  end  of  each  month,  the  students  en- 
gaged in  a  T'/z'a  z'oce  argument  in  the  presence  of  a  professor  on 
a  subject  prescribed  in  advance.  The  advocate  expounded  "the 
thesis  and  defended  it ;  his  opponent  maintained  the  contradictory 
position.  The  argument  was  in  Latin,  and  the  debaters  were 
rigorously  confined  in  their  argument  to  the  syllogistic  method. 
These  weekly  and  monthly  disputations  were  private,  but  before 
the  end  of  the  scholastic  year  there  was  a  great  public  debate.  The 
first  of  these  public  debates  is  referred  to  in  the  Journal  of  the 
Jesuits  of  the  2n(l  of  T^ilv,  1666.     The  Governor  and  all  the  func- 


EDUCATIONAL  ZEAL  OF  THE  ji:sUlTS.  47I 

tionaries  of  the  State  and  Giurch  were  present.  Louis  Jolict, 
who  afterward  accompanied  I'ere  Marcjuette  to  the  discovery  of 
the  Mississippi,  and  Pierre  de  FrancheviUe  were  among  the  dis- 
putants ;  while  Talon,  the  Intendant,  joined  in  the  debate  ^;v^'  bieii, 
according  to  the  Journal,  speaking,  like  the  others,  in  Latin. 

The  great  founder  of  the  Order  of  Jesus,  in  the  glow  of  his 
devout  enthusiasm,  reduced  himself  to  poverty  and  supported 
himself  during  the  long  years  of  his  literary  education  by  charity. 
But  he  learned  from  experience,  during  this  period  of  his  life, 
that  hunger  and  physical  fatigue  are  enemies  to  study,  and  that 
the  mind  works  best  in  a  healthy,  well-fed,  properly-rested  body. 
Consequently,  though  he  decreed  that  the  members  of  his  order 
should  take  the  most  stringent  vow  of  personal  poverty,  he 
encouraged  the  order,  in  its  corporate  capacity,  to  accunnilate 
all  the  property  it  could  for  the  support  of  its  vast  and  widely 
extended  missionary  and  educational  enterprises.  Its  professors 
received  no  salaries,  and  its  pupils  paid  no  fees.  Though  in 
course  of  time  it  became  the  richest  corporation  in  the  world, 
the  members  of  the  order  never  degenerated,  by  reason  of  its 
wealth,  into  sloth  and  luxury,  and  its  boarders — coiiz'icti — were 
well  fed  and  well  housed.  The  Canadian  Fathers  gladly  submitted 
to  extreme  hardship  and  danger  in  their  missionary  journeyings, 
living  year  after  year  in  absolute  isolation  from  all  intellectual 
converse  and  social  refinement ;  and  if,  when  they  returned  to 
Quebec,  they  found  awaiting  them  the  innocent  luxury  of  a 
bed,  their  well-kept  garden  and  grove,  and  a  good  dinner  washed 
down  with  good  wine,  cooled,  if  it  were  not  claret,  with  ice  from 
their  own  ice  house — Lahontan  makes  special  mention  of  that 
useful  addition  to  their  establishment — he  would  be  a  captious 
critic  who  should  begrudge  them  such  well-earned  comfort  and 
refreshment.  '■ 

The  ruling  motive  of  Loyola  was  to  arrest  the  growth  of 
heresy  by  bringing  the  Church  into  harmony  with  the  progress 
of  the  age,  and  thus  producing  a  counter-reformation  within 
the  Church  itself.  The  agency  by  which  he  proposed  to  efifect.  and 
actually  did  effect,  this  momentous  revolution  was  "higher  educa- 
tion."    He   conceived   the   idea,   while   vet   an   illiterate   devotee 


472       QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

in  the  monastery  of  Montserrat.  where  he  hafl  hung  \ip  his 
Knight's  sword,  resolved  to  fight  no  longer  under  the  orders  of 
the  King  of  Navarre,  but  under  those  of  the  Pope.  Loyola  was 
a  man  of  the  world,  and  saw  that  the  venom  of  heresy  injected 
into  all  classes  by  Luther,  Calvin,  and  the  Dutch,  English  and 
Scotch  reformers,  to  say  nothing  of  the  hardly  less  pernicious 
spirit  of  scepticism  and  cynicism  emanating  from  such  scholars 
in  the  Church  itself  as  Erasmus,  far  from  being  counteracted, 
would  be  infiamed  by  the  noisy,  vituperative  abuse  of  the  monks. 
He  correctly  judged  that  a  body  of  priests  must  be  reared  up 
within  the  Church,  who,  while  absolutely  obedient  to  the  See  of 
Rome,  could  defend  the  Church's  position  by  argument  as  well  as 
by  an  example  of  pure  and  devout  living.  He  foresaw  too  that  the 
spread  of  liberal  ideas  in  politics  and  religion  could  be  checked 
among  the  youths  of  Europe,  all  aglow  with  the  intellectual  intox- 
ication of  the  revival  of  the  15th  and  i6th  centuries,  only  by 
supplying  them  with  as  sound  an  education,  based  on  as  profound 
learning,  as  the  best  of  the  existing  schools,  colleges,  and  univer- 
sities could  offer,  but  imparted  by  professors  who  had  been  dri'lled, 
throughout  a  long  novitiate,  both  as  teachers  and  as  priests,  to 
make  intellectual  education  subservient  to  religion  as  taught  by 
the  Church  of  Rome. 

To  fit  himself  for  formulating  such  a  system  he  went  through 
thirteen  years  of  hard  study,  which  began  only  when  he  was 
thirty-three  years  of  age.  The  constitution  of  the  order  w^as 
framed  by  himself  with  the  assistance  of  the  famous  group  of  his 
early  disciples,  but  it  was  formally  promulgated  only  after  his 
death.  The  duties  and  functions  of  the  Society  are  set  forth  as 
ten  in  number,  the  fourth  being  education.  But  though  occu- 
pying only  the  fourth  position,  education  stood  really  first  among 
the  means  which  the  Society  used  to  influence  the  world;  for 
whether  fighting  heresy  in  Europe,  or  heathenism  in  Asia,  or  sav- 
agerv  in  America,  the  one  means  which  its  members  never 
neglected  was  the  establishing  of  colleges  and  universities  where 
sound  learning  w^as  taught,  and  strict  morality  observed.  Only 
two  vears  had  elapsed  after  the  foundation  of  the  order,  which 
took   place   in    1540,   before   two   colleges   had   been   established, 


A   WORLD-WIDE  SYSTEM.  473 

one  in  Portugal  and  the  other  at  Goa,  in  Hindustan,  the  latter 
by  that  greatest  of  Oriental  missionaries,  Saint  Francis  Xavier. 
This  college,  which  grew  in  time  into  a  university,  teaching 
all  the  branches  of  a  liberal  education  m  every  language  of  the 
Orient,  with  a  staiT  of  120  learned  professors,  all  thoroughly 
trained  and  disciplined  members  of  the  order,  became  the  parent 
of  so  many  colleges  in  Japan,  China  and  elsewhere  in  the  East, 
that  by  the  time  the  Jesuits  entered  on  their  missionary  labors 
in  North  America,  it  seemed  as  though  they  were  almost  certain 
to  win  to  Christianity  the  whole  East,  through  the  persuasive 
influence  of  profound  learning,  directed  towards  the  exposition 
of  Christian  doctrine.  In  presenting  the  Christian  religion  for 
acceptance,  the  Jesuits,  with  judicious  elasticity,  adopted  such'  of 
the  practices  and  prejudices  of  the  great  masses  of  humanity, 
they  were  endeavoring  to  leaven,  as  they  did  not  consider  con- 
tradictory to  the  teachings  of  their  divine  Master.  Unfortunately 
their  concessions  in  certain  directions  were  regarded  as  laxitv,  and 
they  were  compelled  by  Rome  to  adhere  more  rigidly  to  Western 
rules.     Then  commenced  the  decline  of  their  Eastern  missions. 

What  wonder  that,  under  the  stimulus  of  such  magnificent 
success,  the  Society  promised  itself  a  similar  harvest  in  America. 
But  the  human  material  afforded  by  the  North  American  Indian 
was  widely  different  from  that  on  which  they  had  worked  in  the 
Orient,  as  the  Fathers  discovered  even  before  they  had  commenced 
to  build  their  college,  and  while  still  endeavoring  to  collect  a 
school  of  Indian  children  at  Notre  Dame  des  Anges.  But  if  they 
could  not  convert  the  Indians  through  their  schools,  they  could 
train  the  youths  of  the  colony  into  good  scholars  and  faithful 
Catholics,  and  therefore  they  lost  no  time  in  building  a  college. 
By  that  date  the  order  had  existed  for  a  century  and  its  system  of 
education,  drafted  by  Loyola  himself  and  put  into  tentative  practice 
for  40  years,  had  been  formulated  in  the  Ratio  Studiorum.  which 
has  remained  to  our  day  the  educational  code  of  every  Jesuit  Col- 
lege throughout  the  world.  So  successful  did  the  system  prove 
that,  before  the  close  of  the  17th  century,  there  existed  769  colleges 
and  universities,  manned  exclusively  by  Jesuit  priests,  and  enroll- 
ing^  as   students   at   least   one-fourth   of  a   million   of   the   most 


474  QUEBEC    IN   THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

promising  youths  of  the  world.     As  primary  education  did  not 
enter  into  the  general  scheme  of  the  Society,  children  under  twelve 
were  not,  in  Europe,  admitted  to  their  schools  unless  exception- 
ally bright ;  while  dull  pupils  of  more  mature  age,  if  unable  to 
maintain   the   desired  pace,   had   to   drop   out  of  the   race.      The 
age  limit,  however,  was  not  enforced  in  Canada.     That  the  Jesuit 
College  in  Quebec  was  planned  and  built  on  such  a  scale — that  it 
was  larger  than  all  the  public  l)uildings  of  Quebec  combined — only 
expressed  the  enthusiastic  faith  of  the  order  in  its  own  high  mis- 
sion. Yet  that  College  building  was  in  the  next  century  turned  into 
a  barrack,  and  a  few  years  ago  was  demolished  to  give  place  to  a 
City    Hall,    while    the    less    ambitious    Seminary    has    lived    and 
prospered.    Why?    Paradoxical  as  it  may  seem,  both  the  success 
and  the  failure  of  the  Jesuit  body  are  probably  due  to  the  splendid 
education  of  its  members.     That  men  so  thoroughly  trained  intel- 
lectually should  eschew  politics  was  as  impossible  in  politically-de- 
veloped Europe  as  in  barbarous  America ;  and  it  has  always  been 
their  interference  in  secular  affairs  that  has  brought  them   into 
conflict  with  the  civil  powers.     On  the  other  hand,  the  order  has 
for  four  centuries  educated  more  scions  of  the  governing  classes 
than  any  other  teaching  body,  and  so  attractive  have  its  professors, 
wdiether  as  men,  friends  or  trainers,  been  to  their  pupils,  that  even 
such  heretics  as  A^oltaire  have  expressed  only  kindly  recollections 
of  the  years  of  tuition  spent  in  a  Jesuit  College.     Moreover,  their 
severe  training  has  raised  the  Jesuits  individually  above  the  gross- 
ness  into  which  the  mendicant  orders  have  too  often  fallen,  while 
their  learning  and  greater  breadth  of  view  have  given  their  faith 
in  the  essential  truths  of  Christianity  a  more  rational  basis  than 
that  possessed  by  some  other  ecclesiastical  bodies,  whose  ortho- 
doxy was  merely  the  orthodoxy  of  catechism  and  tradition.  A  fair 
and  well-balanced   judgment   of  this   remarkable   body   of   men, 
and  of  the  system  under  which  they  worked,  is  as*  essential  to  any 
just  estimate  of  the  forces  which  have  shaped  Canadian  history, 
as  is  an  unprejudiced  view  of  puritanism  to  a  true  comprehension 
of  the  story  of  the  United  States.     In  certain  respects  one  system 
was  simply  the  antithesis  of  the  other,  and  yet,  as  often  happens 
with  contradictories,  they  meet  at  many  points  in  their  practical 
outcome. 


Jesuit  College  and  Church,  from  Smart's  drawinfj,  1759. 


Interior  of  the  Jesuit  Church  after  the  Siege,  1759. 


THE  JESUIT  COLLEGE  IN  T72O.  475 

The  last  college  building,  opened  for  study  less  than  twenty 
years  before  the  Conquest,  covered,  with  its  court,  more  than  an 
acre.  Four  stories  rose  from  h'abrique  Street,  and  two  fronted 
on  the  large  gardens  and  pki}-  grounds,  which  extended  to  Ann 
Street.  In  the  early  days  there  stretched  across  St.  Stanislas 
Street,  extending  to  the  Esplanade  Hill,  a  grove  of  forest  trees 
which  the  old  maps  called  "The  Jesuit  Woods."  The  Church 
jutted  from  the  Northwest  angle  of  the  front,  and  faced  the  mar- 
ket place  and  the  cathedral.  It  had  formed  part  of  the  older  col- 
lege, its  commencement  dating  back  to  1666,  and,  prior  to  its  com- 
pletion, service  was  held  in  a  chapel  in  the  northwest  corner  of  the 
old  main  building  itself. 

The  original  College,  and  the  Church  as  originally  built,  must 
have  possessed  even  less  pretensions  to  architectural  beauty  than 
the   ungainly   structure  only   recently   torn   down.     Lahontan,   in 
1684,  was  charmed  with  the  College  and  its  beautifully  kept  gar- 
dens and  ice  houses,  but  Charlevoix,  himself  a  Jesuit,  describes 
the  College  in  1720  in  most  derogatory  terms  in  one  of  his  letters 
to  Madame  la  Duchesse  de  Lesdiguiercs.  He  tells  her  that  "she  has 
doubtless  read  in  the  Relations  of  the  beauty  of  the  buildings. 
This  was  comparatively  true  when  the  town  was  a  confused  group 
of  Frenchmen's  huts  and  Indian  hovels.     Then  the  College  and 
Fort,  being  the  only   stone   structures,   cut   some  figure    (faisait 
qnelque  figure),  and  by  contrast  struck  the  early  traveler  as  being 
fine  buildings ;  and  succeeding  travelers,  as  is  their  wont,  simply 
repeated   the   glowing   descriptions.      But   now    that   the    Indian 
cabins  have  disappeared,  and  the  French  huts  have  been  trans- 
formed into  respectable  stone  houses,  the  college,  which  is  falling 
into  ruins,  and  whose  courtyard  is  as  filthy  as  a  stable  yard,  actu- 
ally disfigures  the  town.     Moreover,  when  it  was  built,  the  river 
and  harbor  could  be  seen  from  its  upper  windows ;  but  when  the 
Cathedral  and  Seminary  shut  nut  the  glorious  view,  the  market 
place   supplied  a  poor  substitute   in   the   way   of   scenery."     The 
account  of  the   Church,   with   its   wooden   floor,   through    whose 
open  boards  the  wind  whistled  with  icy  blast  in  winter,  is  equally 
unpleasing.     In  a  note,  however,  the  author  tells  us  that,  in  the 
interval  between  the  date  of  his  visit  in  1720  and  the  publication 


ify6  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEXENTEENTII    CENTURY. 

of  his  book  in  1744,  the  college  had  been  partially  rebuilt,  and  had 
been  made  really  beautiful,  fort  bean,  of  which  complimentary 
statement  the  present  generation,  which  has  seen  its  walls  razed, 
can  judge  for  itself. 

Despite  the  educational  advantages  wliich  the  College  offered, 
it  so  declined  that  at  the  date  of  the  Conquest  there  were  only 
nine  members  of  the  order,  including  two  missionaries,  in  Canada. 
The  College  and  Church  suffered  seriously  from  the  bombard- 
ment, but  the  Fathers  returned  to  their  restored  quarters,  re- 
opened their  classes  in  1761  and  carried  on  their  work,  when 
their  brethren  in  Louisiana  were  banished  in  conformity  with 
the  decree  of  1762,  abolishing  the  order  in  France  and  the  colonies. 
The  British  General  refused  to  allow  the  members  of  the  Jesuits 
in  Canada  to  be  replaced  by  novices ;  but  the  closing  of  the  class- 
ical course  in  1768  would  seem  to  have  been  due,  not  so  much  to 
the  reduced  number  of  the  teaching  staff,  as  to  decline  in  the  num- 
ber of  students  of  the  higher  grades.  This  diminution  may  be  ac- 
counted for  by  the  emigration  of  so  many  of  the  wealthy  class 
after  the  Conquest ;  but  it  w'as  more  probably  due  to  the  growing 
popularity  of  the  Seminary,  and  the  increasing  suspicion  of  the 
covert  influences  of  the  educational  system  of  the  Jesuits,  a  sus- 
picion which  expressed  itself  in  the  almost  universal  suppression 
of  the  order  before  the  century  closed.  But  though  the  College 
classes  were  closed,  the  Jesuits  taught  a  primary  school  within 
the  College  walls  till  1776. 

It  is  unreasonable  to  criticize  their  course  of  study  by  the  canons 
of  education  of  to-day.  Quite  independently  of  the  fact  that 
education  was  conducted  by  ecclesiastics  to  whom  Latin  was  a 
sacred  heritage,  Latin  was  the  only  language  of  science,  in  an 
age  when  the  intercourse  between  nations  of  different  tongues 
was  so  slight,  that  it  was  a  rare  thing  for  a  student  to  possess  a 
knowledge  of  any  modern  language  save  his  own. 

The  course  of  study  was,  therefore,  exclusively  classical  till 
late  in  the  century,  as  Father  Brosnahan  in  his  controversy  with 
President  Eliot  admits.  He  allows  that  the  twenty-five  hours 
a  week,  constituting  the  class  work  of  Jesuit  scholars  in  the  17th 
Century,    were    practically    devoted    to    the    exclusive    study    of 


A  Madonna  from  tlie  Cliurch  o{  the  Jesuits  in  Quel)cc, 

bought  at  the  sale  of  the  Jesuit  effects  in  1801. 

By  permission  of  Col.  H.  Neilson. 


THE   JESUIT   SYSTEM    OF    EDUCATION.  477 

Latin  and  Greek.  As  a  contrast,  in  the  Georgetown  University 
to-day,  little  more  than  half  of  the  students'  time  is  devoted  to 
the  classical  languages.  However  useful,  therefore,  the  training 
of  the  Jesuit  College  may  have  been  in  whetting  the  wits  and 
tongues  of  its  students  for  mastery  in  the  rhetorical  competition 
which  was  so  important  an  element  in  their  system,  and  which 
was  practised  in  Quebec  from  the  first,  it  was  hardly  well  fitted 
for  making  engineers,  or  self-reliant  colonists.  The  strict  ob- 
servance of  rule ;  the  profound  reverence  inculcated  for  authority ; 
the  minute  introspection  preached  and  practiced,  into  motives  and 
courses  of  conduct ;  the  close  supervision,  amounting  to  espionage, 
maintained  over  the  pupils  at  all  times,  however  calculated  to 
restrain  them  from  overt  acts  of  immorality,  must  have  diminished 
originality  and  weakened  the  power  of  initiative  and  of  indepen- 
dent action  in  their  scholars,  and  given  them  narrow  and  suspicious 
views  of  life,  little  conducive  to  effective  co-operation  with  their 
comrades  in  the  mighty  task  of  winning  the  wilderness  and 
holding  it  for  France.  This  is  true  despite  the  fact  that  as 
individuals  the  French  explorers  outstripped  all  others,  for  where 
they  failed  was  in  combining  their  forces  so  as  to  hold  the  terri- 
tories they  discovered. 

The  points  of  difference  between  the  Jesuit  and  the  Seminary 
system  of  education  were  not  great  enough  to  make  it  easy  to 
account  for  the  decline  of  the  one  and  the  popularity  of  the  other. 
The  priests  of  the  Seminary  watched  their  pupils  as  sedulously  as 
did  the  Jesuits;  nevertheless,  the  peculiarly  artificial  training 
of  the  Jesuit  Father  must  in  some  way  have  created  a  gap  between 
his  pupil  and  himself,  such  as  did  not  exist  between  the  healthy, 
manly  son  of  the  habitant,  or  the  independent  city  lad,  and  the 
Seminary  priest,  who  still  recognized  family  ties  and  continued  to 
be  an  active  member  of  the  body  social. 

A  specific  cause  of  Jesuit  unpopularity  was  undoubtedly  their 
wealth,  despite  the  unselfish  use  to  which  it  was  in  the  main 
turned.  As  no  revenue  accrued  from  the  Jesuit  College,  educa- 
tion being  free,  and  as  a  large  stafiF  of  missionaries  was  supported 
by  the  order,  there  was  some  reason  for  endowing  it  with  con- 
siderable propertv.     Rut  the  accumulation  of  real  estate  by  the 


47^  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

order  became  early  in  the  colony's  history  a  subject  of  criticism. 
Their  interest  in  the  welfare  of  the  Indian  was  unwarrantably 
coupled  in  the  popular  mind  with  an  interest  in  the  profits  of  the 
fur  trade.  Most  of  their  large  landed  estate  was  acquired  by 
gift  from  the  Crown  or  the  Trading  Company  in  the  i/th  century, 
and  consequently  the  lands  confiscated  on  the  death  of  the  last 
member,  Father  Casot,  in  1799,  substantially  represent  the  prop- 
erty owned  by  the  order  a  century  earlier.  It  consisted  of 
twent}-  acres  in  the  city  of  Quebec,  and  nine  acres  in  the  City  of 
Montreal,  including  the  land  now  occupied  by  the  City  Hall  and 
the  Court  House.  In  addition  the  order  owned  under  fiefs  and 
seignoral  sub-fiefs,  and  as  real  estate  held  in  soccage,  7  seignories 
in  the  District  of  Quebec ;  2  seignories  and  three  small  parcels  of 
land  in  the  District  of  Three  Rivers ;  and,  in  the  District  of  Mon- 
treal, besides  the  property  in  the  City,  the  seignory  of  La  Prairie, 
making  in  all,  as  land  held  under  seignorial  tenure  and  otherwise, 
953,820  arpents.  The  revenue  from  this  very  large  block  of  land 
was  inconsiderable.  The  tenants  paid  insignificant  rents,  and  as 
the  land  in  those  early  days  seldom  changed  hands,  the  lods  et 
vcntes  must  have  been  small. 

M.  Rivard,  the  Superintendent  of  Jesuit  Estates,  reported  the 
revenue  from  the  small  remainder  of  their  property  that  had  not 
been  disposed  of  by  the  Government  up  to  that  time,  as  only 
$6,555.49  bct\\een  1856-1857.  But  whatever  the  revenue  derived 
at  the  period  of  which  we  are  speaking,  the  holding  by  a  single 
religious  body  of  nearly  one  million  acres  of  the  choicest  land  in 
the  Colony  must  have  created  in  the  public  mind  a  measure  of  the 
same  jealousy  as  was  aroused  in  Old  France  against  the  Church, 
when  it  had  becoine  owner  of  about  one-third  of  the  national 
domain.  In  France  tlie  irritation,  growing  out  of  the  exemption 
of  Church  property,  and  of  the  estates  of  the  privileged  classes, 
from  taxation,  at  a  time  when  taxes  were  pressing  with  dire 
sevsrity  on  the  bodv  of  the  nation,  was  one  of  the  main  causes 
of  the  Revolution.  In  Canada,  where  direct  taxes  for  the 
support  of  the  State  were  never  levied,  discontent  on  that 
score  was  unknown  :  but  even  if  the  Jesuits  did  not  share  in  the 
tithes  collected  from  their  tenants  for  the  support  of  the  secular 


THE   SEMINARY   AS  ORGAXIZEl)  ]',V    LAVAI,.  479 

clergy,  it  must  have  seemed  to  tlie  habitants  unjust  to  pay  any 
otficers  of  the  Church  hoth  rent  and  tithes  on  the  same  farm,  even 
though  the  rent  was  in  payment  for  land,  and  the  tithes  in  support 
of  the  Church. 

With  a  view  to  securing  uniformity  in  the  Church  Laval 
ordained  that  the  Cathedral  Chapter  should  be  selected  from  the 
priests  of  the  Seminary,  and  that,  subject  to  the  will  of  himself 
and  his  successors,  the  Seminary  should  control  both  the  appoint- 
ment and  the  recall  of  the  parish  priests  of  the  Diocese.  In  order 
to  reduce  the  clergy  to  more  absolute  dependence,  and  to  regulate 
their  remuneration  more  ecjuitably,  the  institution  from  which  they 
received  their  education  was  made  the  administrator  of  the  tithes, 
which  the  King  permitted  to  be  imposed  for  their  support. 
The  Bishop  hoped  thus  to  bind  them  to  their  Alum  Mater  by  ties 
of  self  interest  as  well  as  of  affection.  In  making  himself  and 
his  successors  the  supreme  depositaries  of  ecclesiastical  patronage 
within  the  diocese,  he  imitated,  he  claimed,  the  example  of  the 
primitive  Church,  but  he  had  a  more  recent  and  less  ambiguous 
model  in  the  Constitution  of  Ignatius  Loyola.  In  this,  as  in  all 
his  episcopal  conduct,  he  acted  on  the  suggestion  of  the  Propa- 
ganda, which  replied  to  the  incjuiry  of  the  nuncio,  as  to  the  influ- 
ence the  bestowal  of  the  revenue  of  the  Abbey  of  Mantes  by 
the  Bishop  would  have  on  the  Church  of  Canada,  that  "though 
the  GalHcan  Church  may  have  certain  privileges,  there  is  no  need 
to  extend  them  to  Canada." 

But  such  as  it  was  and  is,  the  Seminary  has  endeared  itself  to 
every  priestly  student  educated  within  its  walls  in  a  manner  to 
which  no  parallel  can  be  found  in  any  Protestant  institution  of 
either  secular  or  theological  learning.  Its  power  to  remove  the 
cure  and  its  administration  of  the  tithes  became,  it  is  true,  the 
subject  of  bitter  controversy  in  the  days  of  Monscigneur  Saint 
Vallier;  but  when  these  grievances  were  removed  l)y  relieving 
it  of  those  special  functions,  it  retained  in  all  essential  particulars 
the  form  given  to  it  by  its  founder.  The  spirit  he  inspired 
into  it  has  survived  ;  and  it  has  preserved  certain  university  fea- 
tures which  make  it  an  almost  unique  model,  well  worthy  of  study 
bv  those  who  regard  the  associations  and  affiliations  of  college  life, 


480  QUEBEC   IX   THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

and  their  survival  in  after  years,  as  amongst  the  most  desirable 
results  of  a  college  education. 

JJishop  Laval  had  received  an  indelible  impression  from  M,  de 
Bernieres  during  his  residence  in  the  Hermitage  of  Caen,  and  he 
aimed  at  perpetuating  in  his  Seminary  some  of  the  features  of 
that  peaceful  retreat.  His  intentions  as  founder  of  the  latter 
institution  were  expressed  in  the  following  regulations : 

First — All  priests  must  submit  to  the  control  of  the  Seminary 
under  the  direction  of  the  Bishop. 

Second — They  must  not  regard  themselves  as  owners  of  the 
allowances  assigned  them  for  their  subsistence,  and  as  a  recog- 
nition of  their  dependence  they  must  render  an  account  }ear  by 
year  of  their  expenses.  [These  two  rules  were  abrogated  by 
Bishop  Saint  Vallier,  when  the  cures  became  fixed  parish  priests, 
under  the  rule  of  the  Bishop.] 

Third — They  must  lead  so  blameless  a  life  that  none  need  ever 
l^e  removed  for  misconduct. 

Fourth — To  sustain  their  spiritual  power  they  must  once  a 
year  go  into  retreat  at  the  Seminary.  During  this  absence  from 
their  charge  the  Seminary  will  find  a  substitute  to  fill  their  places. 

Fifth — The  Seminary  will  continue  to  regard  them  as  children 
of  the  home,  where  they  will  be  received  and  treated  with  kind- 
ness, whenever  they  come  to  Quebec  ill  or  on  business. 

Sixth — The  Seminary  will  provide  for  their  wants  in  sickness 
and  health,  and  make  no  distinction  in  the  hospitality  it  ofifers, 
be  the  rank  of  the  ecclesiastic  who  seeks  it  what  it  may. 

Seventh — To  encourage  and  console  its  priests  when  absent,  a 
regular  correspondence,  couched  in  kindly  terms,  will  be  main- 
tained with  each  of  them. 

Eighth— And  wdien  from  age,  hardship,  or  infirmity  they  are 
imfit  for  further  work,  they  will  find  in  the  Seminary  a  home  till 
death  releases  them,  and  afterwaids  their  old  friends,  who  are 
left  behind,  will  pray  for  the  repose  of  their  souls. 

What  wonder  that,  with  such  a  constitution,  the  Seminary  of 
Quebec  has  remained  the  corner-stone  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  of  Canada,  and  that  its  founder  was  considered  by  its 
pupils  a  Saint,  well  worthy  of  canonization. 


A  DEEPLY-ROOTEIJ  INSTITUTIOX.  481 

And  Bishop  Laval  himself  lived  up  to  his  principles.  A  noble 
of  France,  he  stripped  himself  of  all  he  possessed,  gave  to  tht^ 
Seminary  his  personal  property,  the  seignories  which  had  been 
granted  him,  and  the  proceeds  of  the  Abbey  of  AIontign\-,  whici; 
had  been  conferred  upon  him  by  the  King ;  and  to  the  day  of  his 
death  lived  an  austere  but  human  life — either  in  the  Seminar}- 
or  at  its  industrial  farm  of  St.  Joachim,  on  the  simple  fare  of  the 
Seminary  priest,  taking  more  than  his  full  share  of  the  drudgery 
of  ecclesiastical  duties. 

The  priest  still  returns  to  the  Seminary  as  to  his  home,  and 
the  provision  to  keep  up  systematic  correspondence  with  the 
Bishop  is  maintained.  In  the  Bishop's  Palace  there  is  a  large 
library  of  bound  volumes  of  Manuscript,  consisting  in  great  part 
of  such  letters,  and  containing  invaluable  records,  bearing  pri- 
marily on  ecclesiastical  affairs,  but  incidentally  on  the  social  and 
political  history  of  New  France  during  the  past  two  centuries  and 
a  half. 

The  first  Greater  Seminary  was  built  of  wood  on  the  site  of  the 
present  Episcopal  Palace,  forming  part  of  the  sixteen  acres  of 
land  bought  from  Guillemette  Hebert,  widow  of  the  old  settler 
Guillaume  Couillard.  Near  by,  within  a  few  feet  of  the  principal 
wing  of  the  present  Petit  Seminaire,  was  a  stone  building  belong- 
ing to  Madame  Couillard  which  the  Bishop  bought  and  altered 
for  the  accommodation  of  his  Petit  Seminaire.*  This  was 
occupied  in  1678.  This  agrees  with  Villeneuve's  ])lan  of  the 
city  made  in  1670.  which  shows  two  buildings,  one  apparently 
on  the  site  of  the  present  Presbytery.  It  was  occupied  liy  the 
Bishop  and  the  priests  of  the  Seminary,  who  were  also  memlxMs  of 
the  Cathedral  Chapter,  and  by  the  parish  priests  of  the  city.  The 
school  and  boarding  quarters  were  somewhat  apart  in  the  nortli- 
east  corner  of  the  garden.  In  Franquelin's  plan  of  1683  both  build- 
ings had  disappeared,  for  in  1679,  before  sailing  for  Europe,  the 
Bishop  laid  the  foundation  stone  of  a  substantial  stone  building 
for  his  Greater  Seminary,  to  replace  the  wooden  structure.     This 

*The    Abbe    Laverdiere    unearthed   the    foundations    of    M.    Couillard's 
house  in  1868. 


482  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVEXTEEXTH    CENTURY, 

safer  and  more  commodious  building  joined  the  Petit  Seminaire 
at  right  angles,  and  was  opened  for  occupation  on  the  Bishop's 
return  in  1680. 

The  buildings  for  the  accommodation  of  the  Greater  and  the 
Lesser  Seminaries  were  finally  constructed  on  the  plan  exhibited 
by  the  buildings  of  to-day  ;  and  so  substantially  was  the  work  done 
that  some  of  the  original  walls  still  stand. 

One  of  the  fires  which  have  been  the  scourge  of  Quebec  broke 
out  in  the  afternoon  of  November  15,  1701.  when  the  pupils  and 
most  of  the  teachers  were  absent  on  a  holiday  at  Sillery.  The 
Cathedral  was  with  difficulty  saved  from  the  flames,  which  in  three 
hours  reduced  the  Presbytery  and  the  School  to  ruins.  Bishop 
Laval  was  confined  to  bed  by  illness  in  his  room  in  the  Seminary, 
but  was  carried  across  the  Market  Place  to  the  Jesuit  College, 
where  he  and  his  clergy  were  hospitably  entertained  for  a  month 
till  quarters  were  prepared  for  them  in  the  unfinished  Episcopal 
Palace,  which  Bishop  Saint  \"allier  had  commenced  in  1693.  Here 
he  remained  onlv  till  the  seminary  was  rebuilt,  as,  nothwithstand- 
ing  his  noble  lineage  and  episcopal  rank,  he  objected  to  living  in  a 
palace.  ^Misfortune  still  pursued  the  Seminary.  During  the  year 
following  the  fire  of  170T  the  Seminary  had  been  rebuilt  and 
enlarged  to  its  present  superficial  dimensions,  when  it  was  again 
destroyed  by  fire.  Again  the  aged  Bishop  accepted  the  kind  invi- 
tation of  the  Jesuits,  and  resided  with  them  for  two  months  till  a 
small  room  in  the  porter's  lodge,  which  the  fire  had  spared,  was 
fitted  up  for  him.  There  he  lived  in  the  grandeur  of  simplicity  till 
death  released  him  in  1708.  The  Porter's  Lodge  stood  where  the 
Chapel  was  subsequently  built.  The  old  chapel,  in  which  it  had 
been  his  desire  that  his  remains  should  rest,  had  not  been  rebuilt 
when  he  died.  But  the  site  of  the  present  chapel  is  more  hallowed 
by  being  the  scene  of  his  death  than  it  could  have  been  had  it 
merely  protected  his  ashes. 

The  first  disaster  seemed  to  invigorate  rather  than  depress  the 
aged  Bishop.  Some  of  the  Directors  proposed  to  allow  the  funds 
to  accumulate  before  rebuilding — not  so  the  indomitable  old  man. 
Navigation  had  closed.  But  he  at  once  dispatched  M.  Joncaire  to 
France,  by  way  of  Boston,  to  carry  the  deplorable  tidings  to  Mon- 


The  Parish  Chapel  and  Cathedral  of  Quebec  before  the  Alteration 
of  the  Facade  in  1848, 
From  Bartlett's  Canadian  Scetterv. 


1  he  Basilica.     Entrance  to  the  Seminary  and  part  of  the  Old  Seminary  Building's. 


I 


SEMINARY  TWICE  DE.STROVRD  BY    FIRE.  483 

seigneur  de  Saint  X^illier.  ikit  neither  his  own  pleachng  nor 
Monseigneur's  sad  tale  could  wring  nnich  money  out  of  the  empty 
pockets  of  the  people,  or  induce  the  King  to  spare  a  gift  of  more 
than  4,000  francs  a  year  till  the  Senunary  should  he  rehuilt. 
The  poor  Canadians,  spurred  hy  the  llishop's  courage  and  the 
example  of  self-denial  set  hy  himself  and  the  Directors,  con- 
tributed the  balance,  wherewith  to  rebuild  the  schools  on  an 
enlarged  scale. 

The  Seminary  possessed  substantial  resources  from  the  first, 
but  owed  most  of  its  available  cash  to  the  Bishop's  liberality.  The 
revenues  of  the  Abbey  of  Maubcc,  coriferred  on  him  were  turned 
over  to  the  Seminary.  He  secured  for  it  also  the  Isle  aux 
Coudres,  the  beach  and  shores  of  the  St.  Lawrence  and  the  St. 
Charles  from  the  Sault  an  Matelot  to  the  Hotel  Dieu  ;  also  the 
Seignorv  of  Beaupre.     His  personal  propertv  was  given  on  con- 

^   .  '  .  .  -  *  ^ 

dition  that — First,  the  Seminary  support  for  three  months  of  each 
year  two  missionaries  among  the  Indians.  [Of  this  condition  the 
Institution  was  relieved  by  the  donor  in  jCicjg.]  Second,  that  the 
priests  of  the  Seminary  say  a  lo\v  mass  daily  for  the  repose  of  his 
soul,  and  those  of  the  departed  members  of  the  Seminary  of 
Foreign  Missions.  Third,  that  the  seminary  support  and  educate 
for  the  priesthood  eight  pupils  to  be  chosen  by  the  Directors. 

The  revenues  derived  from  these  seignories  and  French. 
Abbeys  would  not,  however,  have  sufficed  to  maintain  the  teaching 
staiT,  still  less  to  erect  the  buildings,  had  not  the  Seminary  con- 
trolled the  tithes,  and  been  the  patrons  and  the  bankers  of  the 
clergv  of  the  diocese,  whether  engaged  in  education  or  in  parochial 
work.  As  the  population  increased,  the  revenue  from  fees  and 
board,  moderate  as  the  charges  were  for  these,  became  a  sub- 
stantial source  of  income.''' 


*Ti!l  1730  scholars  were  boarded,  clothed  and  taught  by  tlie  .Seminary 
free  of  charge,  but  after  17,30  the  relatives  were  required  to  furnish  clothes 
and  books.  At  present  the  scale  of  charges  is:  In  the  Petit  Seminaire, 
for  board,  lodging,  tuition,  $ni  per  annum.  Demi-pensionnaires,  who  dine 
in  the  Seminary,  pay  $6  a  month.  In  the  Grand  Seminaire  the  annual 
fee  for  board,  lodging  and  tuition   is  $120. 

Moreover,  in  those  early  days  the   Parish  of  Quebec,   as   wc^ll   as   the 


484  QUEBEC   IN   THE  SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

The  need  of  a  Catholic  University  was  recognized  by  the 
Fathers  of  the  First  Provincial  Council,  held  in  185 1.  Among 
the  various  seminaries  which  might  claim  the  right  of  originating 
and  conducting  it,  the  choice  could  only  lie  between  the  Seminary 
of  Quebec  and  that  of  St.  Sulpice  in  Montreal,  which  opened  its 
doors  under  the  Abbe  Queylus,  manned  by  the  able  priests  from 
the  parent  Seminary  in  Paris,  some  five  or  six  years  before  Bishop 
Laval  issued  his  ordinance  for  the  establishment  of  the  Quebec 
Seminary.  The  Seminary  of  Quebec  was  chosen,  and  it  has  right 
loyally  fulfilled  the  trust,  having  out  of  its  own  funds  expended  in 
the  erection  and  equipment  of  a  university,  which  could  be  called 
by  no  other  name  than  that  of  Laval,  about  $300,000.  And  the 
standard  it  has  maintained  has  been  worthy  of  the  name  it  bears. 

The  Chateau  of  St.  Louis  has  disappeared ;  the  old  fortifica- 
tions are  crumbling;  the  guns  on  the  Grand  Battery  have  become 
useless ;  the  Jesuit  College,  where  highly  trained  teachers  carried 
out  a  system  of  free  tuition,*  was  first  devoted  to  secular  uses,  then 
demolished ;  but  the  Seminary  still  stands,  projecting  the  past 
into  the  present,  and  more  vigorous  and  useful  than  ever.  Within 
its  old  buildings  priests,  imbued  with  its  old  traditions,  and  true 
to  its  old  constitutions,  still  teach.    As  a  corporation  it  has  kept 


Cathedral  Chapter,  was  supplied  by,  and  at  the  cost  of,  the  Seminary,  in 
accordance  with  the  Bishop's  original  plan.  The  arrangement  survived,  not 
without  some  misgivings  by  Bishop  Laval's  successor,  till  1768.  In  that 
year  the  Seminary  resigned  its  cure  to  the  Bishop  on  account  of  the 
growing  burden  of  the  charge,  both  on  its  staff  and  on  its  resources. 

Bishop  Hamel,  in  his  sketch  of  Laval  University  in  "Canada — an 
Encyclopaedia,"  says,  "The  greatest  income  of  the  Seminary  is  a  negative 
one,  and  consists  in  the  fact  that  the  thirty  priests  who  are  employed  as 
professors  in  the  University  and  in  the  College  give  all  their  time  and  their 
energy  without  remuneration.  They  are  not  paid.  They  have  their  board 
with  heat  and  light,  and  are  allowed  $10.00  per  month  for  their  clothing, 
mending  and  washing,  and  this  is  all.  The  Superior  of  the  Seminary,  who 
is  de  jure  the  principal  of  the  University,  receives  no  other  salary." 

*A  feature  of  the  Jesuit  Colleges  which  has  deservedly  won  them 
students,  and  entitled  the  Society  to  credit,  is  that  the  education  provided 
both  in  school,  college,  and  university  has  always  been  absolutely  free. 


I 


Bishop  Laval's  Cliair,  now  in  tiie  Quebec  Seminary. 


J 


INFLUENCE  OF  SEMINARY  EDUCATION.    .  485 

aloof  from  politics  and  its  course  of  study  has  expanded — so  far 
as  the  limitations  imposed  by  the  Church's  regulations  would 
allow — with  the  growth  of  human  knowledge  and  the  recjuire- 
ments  of  modern  society. 

Whether  a  system  of  education  framed  by  ecclesiastics  and 
superintended  by  priests  builds  up  boys  into  energetic,  progressive, 
independent  men  may  be  questioned,  but  it  luust  be  admitted  that 
it  makes  them  gentlemanly.  Bishop  Saint  Vallier  himself  was 
struck,  as  even  the  most  casual  observer  is  to-day,  by  the  appro- 
priate behavior  of  the  little  Seminarists,  wdio  serve  as  acolytes  dur- 
ing mass.  The  exquisite  grace  with  which  they  enter  two  by  two, 
and  after  bowing  to  the  altar,  salute  each  other  before  taking  their 
seats,  is  a  charming  exhibiton  of  what  careful  training"  can  accom- 
plish. The  influence  is  felt  throug'hout  life  of  such  acts  and 
gestures  of  reverence  and  politeness,  and  these,  repeated  genera- 
tion after  generation,  become  hereditary  and  leave  an  indelible 
Impression  of  refinement  and  gentle  bearing  on  the  race. 

It  must  not,  however,  be  supposed  that  complete  satisfaction 
with  the  management  of  the  Seminary  and  its  funds  has  always 
reigned.  Its  wealth,  however  benevolently  expended,  created 
jealousy.  There  is  a  letter  from  a  M.  de  la  Marche,  a  nephew 
of  M.  Boucher  of  Three  Rivers,  to  Count  Pontchartrain.  the 
French  Colonial  Minister,  complaining  of  the  cupidity  of  the 
Seminarv,  as  shown  by  the  wealth  it  had  accumulated  in  lands 
and  houses,  and  the  miserable  pittances  doled  out  to  the  poor 
cures ;  also  of  the  preference  shown  to  its  own  infirm  students 
when  incapacitated  for  work — all  of  which  charges  were  partially 
true,  without  being  unanswerable. 

While  Bishop  Laval  was  not  so  prescient  as  to  depart  from  the 
standards  and  systems  of  primary  and  classical  education  preva- 
lent in  his  day  and  long  afterwards,  be  did  recognize  the  need  of  a 
technical  school,  in  which  those  who  showed  no  aptitude  for 
])urely  intellectual  pursuits  rould  learn  a  trade.  The  experiment 
of  such  a  training  grew  out  of  his  experience  at  the  Seminary, 
where  he  soon  found  that  there  existed  youths  whose  natural  bent 
was  toward  any  other  occupation  'han  the  priesthood,  and  who 
would  be  more  useful  to  society  as  farmers  or  mechanics.     To 


4^0  QUEBEC   IX   THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

meet  this  want  he  established  a  branch  of  the  Seminary  under 
the  towering  cHlT  of  Cap  Tourmente,  at  the  Grande  Ferme  de  Saint 
Joachim,  where  an  elementary  literary  education  was  given  and 
some  instruction  in  practical  and  theoretical  agriculture  and  the 
manual  trades.*  Bishop  Saint  X'allier,  with  the  laudable  inten- 
tion of  enlarging  the  scope  and  usefulness  of  the  Farm  School, 
introduced  into  the  course  of  study  a  classical  element ;  but  it  was 
soon  found  to  be  foreign  to  the  purposes  of  the  Institution,  as  well 
as  uncongenial  to  its  pupils,  and  it  was  abandoned.  When  Bishop 
Laval's  controversy  with  his  successor  was  at  its  height,  in  1691, 
not  wishing  to  embarrass  him  by  his  presence  in  Quebec,  he  took 
up  his  abode  at  Saint  Joachim,  and  the  farm  became  so  dear  to 
him  that  in  1693  he  founded  six  scholarships  under  the  following 
conditions,  which  express  clearly  his  intentions  in  establishing  the 
school,  and  bespeak  his  good  sound  common  sense :  "The  six 
children  must  be  natives,  of  good  habits  and  fit  for  wo''k.  Their 
choice  is  to  rest  with  the  Superior  and  Directors.  They  are  to  be 
fed,  clad  and  trained  to  habits  of  politeness  and  piety,  instructed 
in  reading  and  writing,  drilled  to  do  honest  work,  and  in  the  prac- 
tice of  the  trade  by  which  they  expect  to  gain  their  livelihood,  till 
they  attain  the  age  of  18,  when  they  should  be  able  to  provide  for 
themselves." 

Eight  years  afterwards  M.  Soumande — a  priest  of  the  Sem- 
inary and  Director  of  the  Farm — created  three  more  scholar- 
ships, and  endowed  the  school  with  8.000  francs,  to  be  devoted  to 
the  salary  of  a  master  who  should  train  the  three  youths  as  school 
teachers. 

In  addition,  therefore,  to  founding  a  Seminary,  which  has 
grown  into  one  of  the  great  Continental  Universities,  the  Bishop 
showed  his  appreciation  of  the  value  of  technical  education  and 
training,  by  establishing,  wath  the  assistance  of  his  able  directors, 
the   Grande   Ferme  des   IMaizerets.     He  doubtless   approved  the 


*Tlie  Technical  School  at  Saint  Joachim  has  long  been  closed,  but  the 
Seminary  farm  is  still  cultivated.  There  Laval  himself  rested  and  gratified 
the  love  of  nature  which  was  so  amiable  a  trait  of  his  character:  and 
thither  to-day  the  priests  of  the  Seminary  go  for  rest  and  recreatio^^ 


i 


THE    SECOND    lUSIlOl'    OF    OUEl'.EC. 

action  of  Alons.  Souniande,  wIki  in  the  year  1702  added  a  normal 
school  to  the  technical  department,  ddnis  did  tliis  trnlv  j^Tcat 
man  round  off  his  storm-tossed,  militant  carreer.  His  later  vears — 
he  lived  till  1708— were  not  ruffled  by  any  serious  controversy 
with  either  the  Governor  or  his  episcopal  successor,  who  was  a 
prisoner  in  England  or  France  from  1700  to  17 13. 

The  second  Bishop  of  Quebec  was  almost  as  picturesque 
a  figure  on  the  stage  of  Canada  as  his  predecessor,  but  was 
far  from  possessing  so  creative  a  spirit.  He  from  the  first 
opposed  Laval's  plan  of  making  the  Seminar)-  the  trust  company, 
as  it  were,  of  the  parochial  clergy.  Thus  after  Laval's  self-control 
had  been  tested  in  France,  it  was  put  to  a  much  more  severe  trial 
in  Canada,  and  that,  not  by  a  civil  governor  or  a  member  of  the 
State,  but  by  his  own  successor  in  the  Episcopal  See,  a  man, 
endowed  by  virtue  of  lus  office,  with  the  same  spiritual  pre- 
rogatives and  authority  which  he  himself  had  claimed  to  possess. 
When  the  new  Bishop  reversed  Laval's  whole  church  policy,  by 
which  the  appointment  and  support  of  the  secular  clergy  were 
vested  in  the  Seminary,  he  did  so  in  a  manner  as  arbitrary  as 
Frontenac  himself  could  have  adopted.  Yet,  although  the  subject 
was  one  of  far  more  importance  to  both  Church  and  vState  than 
most  of  the  matters  which  in  his  earlier  years  he  had  deemed 
so  vital,  the  retired  Bishop  now  confined  himself  to  expressing  his 
opinions  with  vigor,  but  without  anger.  He  did  not  conceal  his 
poignant  regret,  but  he  refrained  from  imputing  ignoble  motives 
to  those  who  were  wounding  him  and  his  old  colleagues  to  the 
quick ;  and  when  further  opposition  could  only  have  embarrassed 
his  successor  and  distressed  the  Church,  he  retired  to  his  seminarv 
farm  at  St.  Joachim.  The  mellowing  influence  of  age  and  mature 
judgment  was  never  better  exemplified  than  in  thus  tem])ering  the 
impetuosity  of  a  noble  character. 

When  Saint  Vallier  first  went  to  Canada  as  Laval's  (I'rand 
Vicar  he  was  fascinated,  in  the  course  of  a  tour  which  he  at  once 
made  of  his  immense  diocese,  stretching  from  the  ocean  to  the 
Lakes,  by  certain  attractive  phases  of  Canadian  society ;  by  the 
free,  generous  and  genial  character  of  the  roya^s^cnrs:  by  the  pure, 
simple  and  self-reliant  habits  of  the  Jiabi fonts;  by  the  open-handed 


4^8  QUEBEC    IX    THE   SEVEXTEEXTH    CENTUR\'. 

hospitality  of  all  classes,  and  the  genuine  earnestness  of  the 
Seminary  priests.  "The  people,  generally  speaking,"  so  he  wrote 
in  his  famous  letter  on  the  State  of  the  Church,  "are  as  devout  as 
the  clergy  appear  saintly.  One  remarks  among  them  the  same 
virtues  as  we  admire  in  the  primitive  Christians— simplicity,  de- 
votion and  charity."  To  one  brought  up  as  he  had  been  in  the 
artificial,  stifiing,  not  to  say  immoral,  atmosphere  of  the  Court, 
still  young  and  with  little  knowledge  of  mankind  at  large,  Canada 
seemed  by  contrast  like  paradise  itself,  and  as  such  he  described  it. 

But  when  he  returned  to  Canada,  one  illusion  after  another  was 
dispelled.  He  came  into  close  touch  with  the  city,  though  only 
a  provincial  one,  and  its  sins  ;  he  recognized  that  the  love  of  power 
was  as  strong  in  priest  as  in  politician,  and  as  likely  to  distort 
the  judgment  of  the  cleric  as  of  the  civil  ruler.  Then,  like  all 
men  of  vigor  and  passion,  when  they  change  their  opinions,  he 
went  from  one  extreme  to  another.  Instead  of  primitive  purity, 
he  now  saw  only  sin  and  selfishness  in  priest  and  layman,  while 
he  described  the  country  as  being  on  the  very  verge  of  ruin. 

Bishop  Saint  A'allier  sailed  for  France  in  the  Autumn  of  i/OO, 
but  on  his  return  voyage  was  captured  by  the  English,  held  a 
prisoner  for  some  years,  exchanged,  but  forbidden  by  the  French 
King  to  return  to  his  diocese  till  1 71 2.  It  was  perhaps  as  well. 
He  was  as  firmly  persuaded  of  his  infallibility  as  the  great  prelate, 
his  predecessor.  But  Laval  was  consistent — Saint  \'allier  was 
not ;  and  infallibility  without  consistency  is  not  convincing  or  con- 
ducive to  obedience.  He  therefore  always  had  a  batch  of  quarrels 
on  his  hands,  and  possessed  a  most  unfortunate  faculty  for  making 
enemies  and  for  doing  the  right  thing  in  the  wrong  wav.     The 


*Though  M.  de  Saint  Vallier  had  been  selected  as  his  assistant  by 
Bishop  Laval  himself  on  the  recommendation  of  Pere  Louis  de  Valois, 
a  Jesuit,  and  M.  Tronson,  superior  of  the  College  of  St.  Sulpice,  his  con- 
firmation by  the  King  was  from  motives  of  policy.  He  had  been  for  years 
attached  to  the  Court  as  almoner.  He  was  a  man  of  family  and  property, 
and  therefore,  according  to  the  customs  of  the  time,  by  rank  and  social 
position,  eh'gible  for  a  bishopric.  His  conduct  had  been  exemplary;  he 
was  a  man  of  abundant  zeal,  energy  and  honest  intention,  though,  as 
afterward    appeared,    lacking   in    self-restraint    and    prudence. 


ILL-UIKlXTEl)  ZEAL.  489 

breach  between  himself  and  the  Seminary  was  never  completely 
healed.  He  had  alienated  the  attachment  of  the  Grey  Nuns  of  the 
Hotel  Dieu  by  establishing  the  General  Hospital  under  the  charge 
of  the  same  order,  but  not  as  a  branch  of  the  parent  institution. 
He  had  been  in  closest  friendship  with  Frontenac,  inasmuch  as 
neither  loved  the  Jesuits  and  both  were  at  feud  with  Laval ;  and 
yet  he  quarrelled  with  him  on  so  trifling  a  matter  as  a  proposed 
performance  of  the  comedy,  "Tartuffe."  Though  the  Intendant, 
Champigny,  was  a  very  faithful  son  of  the  Church,  yet  because  he 
espoused  the  side  of  the  Ladies  of  the  Hotel  Dieu  against  the 
Bishop's  pet  scheme,  the  General  Hospital,  he  incurred  the  severe 
displeasure  of  the  prelate.  He  used  the  Recollets  most  dexter- 
ously for  a  time  against  Bishop  Laval  and  the  Jesuits,  and  re- 
warded them  accordingly  ;  then  quarreled  with  them  over  a  matter 
of  precedence  involving  Governor  Callieres  of  Montreal,  and 
closed  their  church  at  that  place.  With  a  perverseness  beyond 
conception  he  alienated  his  friends  ;  forged  weapons  for  his  ene- 
mies ;  and  made  his  position  so  untenable  that,  as  he  would  not 
resign  his  diocese,  he  was  twice  detained  for  years  in  France  at 
the  will  of  the  King. 

He  was  generous  and  yet  often  inconsistent.  He  gave 
liberally  one  moment,  and  withdrew  the  gift  the  next.  He  built  a 
costly  episcopal  palace,  and  lived  like  a  mendicant  in  his  Gen- 
eral Hospital.  Taking  everything  into  account.  Canada  owes 
him  much.  His  General  Hospital  has  been  a  boon  to  Quebec,  and 
the  parochial  system  of  fixed  cures,  independent  of  the  Seminary, 
has  bestowed  on  the  Church  organization  an  elasticity  which  it 
would  probably  not  have  possessed  under  Bishop  Laval's  system, 
and  has  enlisted  more  warmly  for  his  priests  the  sympathy  of 
their  parishioners. 

Whatever  his  faults,  his  openhandedncss  and  sympathy  with 
the  sufifering  and  the  indigent  atoned  for  them  in  the  eyes  of  ene- 
mies as  well  as  of  friends ;  for  Frontenac,  in  almost  the  last  sen- 
tence of  his  last  dispatch,  commended  him  to  the  ^linistcr  "for  his 
charitv  in  succoring  the  poor  and  his  activity  in  every  good  work." 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 

Quebec  as  It  Appeared  at  the  End  of  the  Seventeenth 

Century. 

W'nh  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century  terminated  the 
"heroic  period"  of  Canadian  history.  Frontenac  died  in  1698; 
Bishop  Laval  lingered  until  1708 ;  La  Salle  had  been  mur- 
dered in  1687;  and  the  formative  period  of  French  colonial  rule 
was  drawmg  to  its  close. 

City  life  with  its  clerical  and  official  elements  and  its  segrega- 
tion into  classes  was  assuming  a  type  not  differing  widely  from 
that  of  to-day  ;  and  the  shores  of  the  St.  Lawrence  from  Les 
Eboulements  to  Lachine  were  fringed  by  the  homes  of  habitants, 
clustered  around  their  churches.  Though  the  colony  was  not  a 
century  old,  the  people  had  acquired  a  distinct  national  character. 
The  educational  effects  of  self-reliance,  despite  the  weakening 
influence  of  their  political  institutions,  had,  in  less  than  three  gen- 
erations, created  in  Canada  a  farming  population  very  different 
from  the  tillers  of  the  soil  in  Old  France.  Many  of  the  colonists 
had  been  drawn  from  the  seafarers  of  Brittany  and  Xor- 
mandy,  and  when  sailors  turn  farmers  they  carry  some  of  the 
habits  and  mental  characteristics  acquired  in  their  old  calling  into 
the  practice  of  their  new.  Others  had  been  soldiers  of  the  Carig- 
nan-Salieres  Regiment,  who  in  fighting  all  over  Europe  had 
gained  a  certain  cosmopolitan  character  before  reaching  the  St. 
Lawrence.  Lahontan  tells  us  that  when  he  was  garrisoned  with 
his  three  companies  on  the  Cote  de  Beaupre,  in  the  year  169 1,  he 
was  struck  with  the  air,  not  only  of  comfort,  but  of  independence 
which  distinguished  his  hosts.  He  soon  found  that  he  must  not 
call  them  peasants.  They  were  "habitants,"  and  resented  the  term 
peasant  as  vehemently  as  would  a  Spaniard.     "Perhaps,"  he  adds, 


QUEBEC    IN     1698.  491 

"because  they  were  not  compelled  to  recognize  allegiance  to  the 
seigneur  by  the  payment  of  scl  ct  taillc.  i'erhaps  because  they 
have  the  right  of  fishing  and  hunting.  Be  the  explanation  what 
it  may,  their  free  life  puts  them  on  the  level  of  the  nobles  them- 
selves." 

Not  only  the  gallant  Captain  Lahontan,  and  the  sedate  La 
Potherie,  but  the  Swedish  naturalist,  Kalm,  all  agree  in  praising 
the  delightful  gaiety  and  intelligence  of  the  Canadian  women,  the 
self-reliant  demeanor  of  the  men,  and  the  courtesy  among  all 
classes,  which  even  entitled  the  habitant  and  his  wife  to  be  ad- 
dressed as  ijioiisiciir  and  iiiadainc.  The  beauty  and  charm  of  man- 
ner of  the  Canadian  girl  has  been  the  theme  of  every  traveler  since 
then.  Even  the  Jesuit  Father  Charlevoix  is  rapturous  on  the  sub- 
ject, and  not  without  reason  attributes  these  qualities  to  the  educa- 
tion the  girls  receive  from  the  nuns,  who,  like  the  priests,  drew  a 
distinction  between  education  in  its  wider  sense  and  mere  intel- 
lectual training.  But  the  greater  freedom  of  intercourse  whicli 
boys  and  girls  in  Canada  have  always  enjoyed,  as  compared  with 
their  kinsfolk  in  Old  France,  has  also  been  a  potent  factor  in  devel- 
oping certain  national  traits  which  two  hundred  years  ago  shocked 
Governor  Denonville,  who  saw  in  them  only  symptoms  of  danger- 
ous lawlessness  and  filial  disrespect. 

The  river  above  Quebec  was  still  considered  as  imnavigal)le  for 
ocean  ships,  small  as  they  were  in  those  dnys.  Tt  was  not  until 
after  Kirke's  conquest  that  trading  vessels  ventured  above  Tadou- 
sac,  nor  was  it  until  the  steam  tug  came  to  the  assistance  of  the 
sailing  vessel  in  1809  that  Quebec  lost  her  prestige  as  practically 
the  head  of  ocean  navigation.  Montreal  did  not  become  a  port 
of  entry  until  1832,  when  117  vessels,  coasting  and  foreign,  dis- 
cliarged  27,713  tons  of  cargo  on  her  wharves. 

Quebec  itself  was  still  a  very  small  town.  The  religious  cen- 
sus taken  by  Bishop  Laval  in  t68t  assigns  to  it  a  population  of  239 
families  and  1,354  souls,  but  it  had  grown  to  1,988  souls  before  the 
census  of  1698  was  taken.  Tn  the  whole  government  of  Ouebec 
there  were  only  1,460  houses,  37  churches  and  26  mills.  The 
Indian  population  on  the  five  reservations  consisted  of  T.540.  of 
wliom  355  were  in  the  Abenaki  and  Montagnais  settlements  of  the 


492  yUEUEC    IX    THE   SEVEXTEEXTH    CEXTURY. 

Chaudiere,  and  122  in  the  Huron  village  of  Lorette.  Being-  at 
the  head  of  navigation,  and  no  trade  being  lawful  with  the  English 
colonies,  it  was  the  mercantile  depot  for  the  whole  interior  con- 
tinent. Between  the  French  and  English  colonies  not  only  was 
trade  forbidden,  but  travelling  to  the  Hudson  without  a  permit 
was  punishable  by  death.  Xew  England  would  have  been  willing 
enough  to  open  a  highway  that  could  be  used  either  for  war  or 
for  trade :  but  Canada's  safety  as  well  as  her  theological  purity 
depended  on  isolation.*    It  was  not  until  1730  that  there  was  even 


*For  the  state  of  Canada  and  Quebec  at  the  period  now  in  question  we 
have  in  the  Edits  ct  Ordonnances  of  the  Sovereign  Council  a  mass  of 
oflficial  decrees  and  correspondence  dealing  with  every  imaginable  subject, 
from  minute  regulations  of  the  daily  life  of  the  people  to  important  state 
afifairs.  But  just  as  the  gossipy  Journal  of  the  Jesuits  gives  us  a  more 
intimate  and  homely  view  of  current  events  than  the  more  studied 
narratives  of  the  Relations,  so  we  have  a  more  lifelike  portrayal  of  people 
as  they  were  two  hundred  years  ago  in  Lahontan's  and  La  Potherie's  books 
of  travel  than  in  the  official  records.  Baron  Lahontan  was  a  sailor, 
though  he  had  command  of  some  companies  of  soldiers  in  La  Barre's 
war  with  the  Iroquois.  He  took  somewhat  free  and  liberal  views  of  men, 
women  and  manners,  and  expressed  them  so  frankly,  that  he  was  forced 
to  publish  his  book  in  Belgium.  He  arrived  in  Quebec  just  as  La  Salle 
had  reached  there  with  his  startling  story  of  the  Mississippi,  and  was 
hurrying  on  to  report  his  great  discoveries  in  France.  Even  though  the 
great  explorer  may  have  kept  his  secret  from  the  public,  the  guests  of 
the  Chateau  must  have  known  it.  Lahontan's  adventurous  spirit  was 
moved,  but  not  sufficiently  so  to  induce  him  to  forego  the  good  things  of 
life,  and  exchange  the  charms  of  Canadian  female  society  for  those  of  the 
Illinois  squaw.  La  Potherie  was  less  of  a  gallant  than  Lahontan,  and  not 
nearly  so  good  a  story  teller.  He  was  with  the  fleet  that  Iberville  commanded 
when  he  recovered  Hudson  Bay.  after  having  performed  his  daring  and 
successful  exploits  in  Newfoundland.  He  also  relates  events  in  a  series  of 
letters,  which,  though  not  as  fresh  and  amusing  as  Lahontan's,  are  probably 
somewhat  truer  to  facts. 

It  was  towards  the  close  of  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  that 
Kalm,  the  Swedish  naturalist,  visited  the  St.  Lawrence  and  made  those 
minute  and  accurate  observations  of  the  country  and  people  which  have 
rendered  the  book  he  subsequently  published  a  complete  repertory  of 
information  on  the  subject.  Canada  changed  so  slowly  that  the  next  half 
century  made  no  very  noticeable  difference  in  the  aspect  of  the  land  or  the 
character  of  its   inhabitants. 


NATURAL  FEATURES  OF  THE  CITY. 


493 


a  road  between  Quebec  and  Montreal.  Ibe  rivalry  between  tbe 
two  towns  bad  existed  from  tbe  earliest  day.  Wben  in  1658  it  was 
deemed  advisable  to  send  two  of  tbe  Hotel  Dieu  nuns  from  (Que- 
bec to  A^illemarie,  tbe  transfer  bad  to  be  made  secretly  by  reason 
of  the  opposition  to  the  Montreal  Com]jany.  Ao;ain,  when  it  was 
proposed  to  appoint  a  successor  to  Bishop  Laval,  Montreal  claimed 
the  see  in  virtue  of  lier  more  central  position  ;  failing  that,  she 
held  that  she  was  at  least  entitled  to  have  a  bishop  of  her  own. 
Commercial  rivalry  aggravated  ecclesiastical  jealousy.  When 
de  Lauzon  virtually  confiscated  the  store  of  the  Montreal  Com- 
pany in  Quebec,  and  d'Avaugour  confirmed  the  action,  the  process 
was  begun  which  long  continued  to  cause  dissatisfaction  in  Mon- 
treal— tbat  of  compelling  the  western  town  to  trade  with  the 
eastern,  and  so  rendering  the  Montreal  merchants  contributory 
to  the  wholesale  houses  of  Quebec. 

The  city  itself  has  changed  but  little,  for  it  possesses  the  ad- 
vantage to  tbe  historian  and  antiquary  over  many  another  city  that 
its  leading  topographical  features  are  so  prominent,  that  they  must 
always  determine  its  general  plan.  Mountain  Hill,  when  it  was  a 
mere  bridle  path  up  a  steep,  rocky  ridge,  was  what  it  is  to-day — the 
only  direct  road  from  the  beach  to  the  summit  of  the  cliff,  or 
from  tbe  Lower  to  the  Upper  Town.  The  direction  of  the  streets 
was  determined  by  strongly  marked  natural  elevations  or  depres- 
sions in  the  contour  of  the  city  site,  except  when  deflected  for  the 
purpose  of  reaching  or  avoiding  the  large  tracts  given  in  the  early 
days  to  the  religious  bodies  or  subsequently  bought  by  them.  * 

Nevertheless  some  natural  features  have  disappeared.  The 
stream  which  De  Gaspe  in  his  "Les  Anciens  Canadiens"  describes 
as  running,  even  in  his  day,  from  Cape  Diamond  and  ripi)ling 
through  the  market  place  between  the  Cathedral  and  the  Jesuit 
College,  has  been  absorbed  by  the  drainage  system  of  tbe  town. 
Not  until  1853  did  Quebec  enjoy  the  advantage  of  a  water  system 
or  efficient  sewage,  and  some  of  us  still  recollect  the  water  cart 


*The  city  of  Quebec  cuiitained,  when  the  seiffnorial  tenure  act 
passed  in  1854,  ten  original  concessions  subject  to  the  charge  of  lods  ei 
rentes  on  each  change  of  ownersliip. 


494  QUEBEC    IX    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

drivers  backing  into  the  dirty  water  of  the  Cul  de  Sac,  bucketing 
the  turbid  tiuid  into  their  barrels,  and  distributing  it  at  12J/2  cents 
(sevenpence  halfpenny )  per  barrel  into  other  barrels  in  the  cellars 
of  the  upper  town  houses.  Xo  wonder  that  during  the  cholera 
epidemic  of  1832  one-ninth  of  the  whole  population  was  swept 
away  in  a  few  weeks — some  3,000  souls  out  of  a  population  of 
27,000. 

In  1637  twelve  acres  in  the  heart  of  the  future  city  were  ceded 
to  the  Jesuits,  who  at  once  commenced  building  their  college 
thereon.  Twelve  more  were  deeded  to  the  Duchess  d'Aiguillon 
for  the  Grey  Xuns,  whose  hospital  was  under  way  when  they 
arrived  in  1639.  This  tract  lay  to  the  north  and  east  of  the  Jesuits' 
ground,  and  occupied  the  brink  of  the  steep  clift  overlooking  the 
estuary  of  the  St.  Charles.  The  Hospital  and  garden  now 
occupy  part  only  of  the  original  tract,  as  the  nuns  have  laid  out  in 
streets  and  sold  a  large  portion  of  the  property,  including  their 
old  graveyard,  lying  to  the  east  of  their  enclosed  ground.  An- 
other grant  of  twelve  acres  was  made  to  the  Ursuline  Nuns.  It 
lay  close  along  the  west  line  of  the  Jesuit  property.  On  it 
they  commenced  building  immediately  on  their  arrival.  At  a 
later  date  they  likewise  sold,  for  residence  purposes,  portions  of 
land  lying  on  the  outskirts  of  their  grant.  There  is  in  their 
archives  an  interesting  plan  submitted  to  and  approved  by  Fron- 
tenac,  showing  the  plots  they  proposed  laying  out  for  secular 
purposes.  The  space  occupied  by  Champlain's  ChapcUc  de  la 
Rccoiivrancc  was  too  small  to  accommodate  the  Presbytery,  and 
therefore  additional  ground  was  acquired  for  it  and  the  parish 
church,  which  was  already  erected  when  Bishop  Laval  arrived. 
The  Bishop  lost  no  time  in  securing  for  his  Seminary  a  large 
tract,  extending  from  the  rear  of  the  Cathedral  to  the  cliffs  over- 
hanging the  St.  Lawrence  and  the  mouth  of  the  St.  Charles.  Dur- 
ham and  Dufiferin  Terraces  were  occupied  by  the  Chateau  of  St. 
Louis  and  by  a  battery  of  small  guns,  which  still  stands,  a  monu- 
ment of  the  past,  to  the  west  of  Frontenac  Hotel.  The  site  of  the 
Court  House  was  even  then  devoted  to  law  as  administered  by  the 
senechausscc.  It  had  been  the  meeting  place,  it  is  supposed,  of 
the  Sovereign  Council  prior  to  temporary  occupation  of  Talon'" 


:ir 


Plan  of  the  Upper  and  Lower  Towns  of  Quebec  in  1(370. 


ECCLESIASTICAL  PROPERTY.  495 

brewery  and  pending  the  erection  of  the  Intendant's  palace.  The 
adjacent  ground,  on  a  portion  of  which  is  now  built  the  Episcopal 
Cathedral,  was  ceded  to  the  Recollets,  whose  Church  extended 
over  part  of  the  present  Place  d'Armes.  Bishop  Saint  Vallier  in- 
creased the  area  of  ecclesiastical  property  by  securing  for  his 
palace  a  site  adjoining  the  Seminary  Garden  to  the  west,  near 
the  summit  of  Mountain  Hill. 

Thus  of  the  total  area  of  about  eighty-three  acres  which  the 
old  Upper  Town  covered,  a  far  larger  area  was  occupied  by  the 
religious  communities,  and  assigned  to  defence  or  other  public 
purposes,  than  even  to-day,  v/hen,  excluding  the  esplanade  and 
glacis  of  the  Citadel,  which  were  not  then  within  the  city  limits, 
about  40  per  cent,  of  the  area  of  the  city  consists  of  ecclesiastical 
and  public  property.  The  Jesuit  College  reservation  has  ceased 
to  be  religious  and  become  municipal  property.  The  Recollet 
tract  has  changed  hands,  but  most  of  it  is  still  in  the  possession  of 
a  religious  body.  The  Ursulines  and  the  Hospitalieres  have 
slightly  contracted  their  reservations,  but  it  is  signficant  of  the 
stability  and  conservatism  of  the  Church  that  it  recognizes  the 
I)ower  which  resides  in  real  estate,  and  can  rarely  be  tempted  to 
convert  it  even  into  money.  The  characteristics  which  pervaded 
old  Quebec  are  still  stamped  on  the  modern  town,  and  the  spirit  of 
the  past  is  there  expressed  as  nowhere  else  on  the  Continent  by  the 
same  old  walls,  enclosing  the  same  old  gardens,  colleges,  nun- 
neries and  hospitals.* 


*  The  census  of  1716  enumerates  the  streets  of  the  Upper  Town, 
and  indicates  that  the  Upper  Town  consisted  of  a  small  group  of  houses 
clustered  around  the  Market  Place  or  the  Place  Notre  Dame,  and  stretch- 
ing out  along  the  Grande  Allee  and  St.  John  Street.  The  names  are  still 
familiar — Rue  Saint  Louis,  Des  Jardins,  because  it  ran  along  the  Jesuit 
Garden ;  Sainte  Anne,  which  was  then  a  short  street  corresponding  only 
to  that  part  of  St.  Ann  Street,  which  now  hounds  the  English  Cathedral ; 
Treasure  Lane,  not  named,  hut  described  as  a  lane  running  from  the  Place 
d'Armes  to  the  Cemetery  near  the  Presbytery;  Rue  Buade,  as  it  exists 
to-day :  a  nameless  street  corresponding  to  Rue  St.  Famille  and  Garneau ; 
Rue  Couillard,  terminating  at  the  Cemetery  of  the  Hotel  Dieu  ;  Rne  des 
Pauvres,  now  Rue  Fabrique;  Rue  Saint  Jean,  extension  to  the  Fortifica- 
tion; St.  Nicholas,  Quartier  du  Palais;  de  la  Montagne  or  Mountain  Hill. 


49^  QUEBEC   IX    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

Thus  while  tlic  formation  of  the  promontory  renders  it  impos- 
sible to  cut  a  single  level  street  within  the  confines  of  the  town, 
these  large  concessions,  and  the  necessity  they  imposed  of  con- 
forming the  streets  to  their  outlines,  brought  it  about  that  in  no 
section  of  the  town  has  it  been  possible  to  lay  out  the  streets  with 
a  simple  view  to  symmetry  and  convenience. 

La  Potherie  drew  a  picture  of  Quebec  at  this  period,  with  its 
straggling  row  of  houses  extending  up  the  beach  of  the  St. 
Charles,  and  in  the  other  direction  encircling  the  base  of  Cape 
Diamond,  but  clustered  three  and  four  deep  at  the  foot  of  Moun- 
tain Hill  around  the  old  Company's  stores,  where  recently  the 
Church  of  Notre  Dame  de  la  A'ictoire  had  been  built  to  commem- 
orate tl:e  defeat  of  the  naval  expedition  under  Sir  'William 
Phips.  Here  the  mercantile  community  dwelt  and  transacted  its 
business  in  substantial  two-story  houses  and  warehouses,  rebuilt 
of  stone  after  the  destructive  fire  of  1682.  A  battery  of  guns 
is  seen  planted  to  the  north  of  the  Cul  de  Sac,  extending  out  into 
the  river.  And  three  substantial  wharves  occupied  what  is  still 
the  busy  portion  of  the  river  front.  Lahontan  complained  that 
they  were  of  wood,  and  of  wood  they  are  to  this  day.  Houses 
lined  both  sides  of  Mountain  Hill,  as  they  did  until  the  old 
"Gazette"  ofifice  was  removed  in  the  middle  of  the  last  century. 
Above  that  point,  in  ascending,  the  grounds  of  the  Bishop's  palace 
occupied  the  space  to  the  right  which  used  to  be  the  old  cemetery. 
This  spot  on  the  flank  of  the  hill  w'as  doubtless  selected  as  the 
first  burial  ground  because  accessible  to  the  dwellers  both  below 
and  on  the  clifT,  when  the  dead  had  to  be  carried  to  their  last  rest- 


Notre  Dame  de  Meulles  and  Champlain  from  the  top  of  staircase  to  the 
base  of  Cape  Diamond;  Cul  de  Sac;  Sous  le  Fort;  Petite  Riviere,  from 
the  General  Hospital  to  the  house  of  Dion ;  Rue  Sault  an  Matelot,  dark 
and  narrow  under  the  shadow  of  the  cliff,  existed  then.  Saint  Peter  Street 
had  been  reclaimed  from  the  river,  and  is  mentioned  in  a  concession  by 
Governor  La  Barre  to  the  Jesuits;  but  St.  Paul  Street  was  not  opened 
until  1816;  though  a  few  houses  were  built  on  the  beach  of  the  St.  Charles. 
Very  interesting  information  about  the  fortifications  and  streets  is 
given  by  Lemoine  in  a  paper  on  these  subjects  published  in  1875,  in  notes 
to  Gosselin's  Monseigneur  de  Saint  Vallier  and  in  Doughty's  recent  books 
on  Quebec  and  its  fortifications. 


Little  Champlain  Street. 


THE   BISHOP  S    PAI^ACE.  497 

ing  place  on  men's  shoulders.  No  fortifications  or  gates  had  yet 
been  erected  on  the  cliff  facing  the  river  front  to  the  north  of  the 
Chateau.  This,  as  the  traveller  ascended  the  hill,  towered  to  the 
left. 

To  the  right,  overlooking  the  river,  was  the  Episcopal  Palace, 
built  by  Bishop  Saint  Vallier  on  three  acres  of  grftund  bought, 
together  with  a  good  two-storied  stone  house,  from  Mons.  Pro- 
vost in  1688.  The  house  was  incorporated  into  the  palace.  The 
architectural  decoration  and  the  dimensions  of  the  palace  bespeak- 
not  only  a  more  ambitious  taste  on  the  part  of  Bishop  Saint  Yal- 
lier,  as  compared  with  his  predecessor  Laval,  but  the  transition  of 
the  colony  from  that  primitive  stage  in  which  self-defence  and 
the  supply  of  life's  necessities  absorbed  every  faculty,  to  that  later 
one  in  which  it  becomes  possible  to  devote  some  thought  to  the 
elevation  and  adornment  of  existence.  Although  the  palace  was 
not  completed  in  accordance  with  the  original  plan,  it  yet  pre- 
sented, as  seen  from  the  river,  an  imposing  two-storied  elevation, 
which  to  the  eye  gained  additional  height,  by  appearing  to  rise 
from  the  precipitous  cliff.* 

The  vard  of  the  palace  was  entered  beneath  a  handsome  gate- 
way from  Mountain  Street,  and  the  facade  represented  the  only 
real  piece  of  decorative  architecture  in  Quebec.  The  wall  of  the 
Bishop's  palace  separated  his  garden  from  that  of  the  Seminary. 
There  was  then  no  Grand  Battery  or  Rampart  Street,  for  the  Sem- 
inary Garden  extended  to  the  brink  of  the  cliff;  and  nearly,  if  not 
quite,  the  whole  space  now  occupied  by  the  Seminary,  its  garden, 
the  Paval  University  and  the  streets  intervening  between  the  Sem- 
inary gardens  and  those  of  the  Hotel  Dieu,  was  divided  between 
these  two  institutions.  In  the  midst  of  its  spacious  grounds  stood 
the  Seminary,  built  of  stone.     Curving  around   in   front  of  the 


*  As  the  copy  of  Robert  Short's  drawing  shows,  the  Palace,  owing  to  its 
exposed  position,  suffered  lamentably  during  the  siege  of  1759-  ^^'^• 
when  repaired,  its  modest  architectural  adornments  were  not  replaced,  if 
we  may  judge  from  the  picture  of  the  Parliament  House,  into  which  it 
was  finally  converted.  The  cut  copied  from  Bourne's  Quebec.  1829,  shows 
the  chapel  and  a  wing  of  the  Palace  in  the  foreground.  In  the  background 
rises  the  Chateau  of  St.  Louis,  which  had  not  then  been  destroyed  by  fire. 


498  QUEBEC   IN    THE  SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

present  Bishop's  palace,  which  was  built  on  property  bought  in 
1843  by  Bishop  Turgeon,  when  the  old  palace  was  sold  to  the  gov- 
ernment for  a  Parliament  building,  the  street  then,  or  soon  after- 
wards called  Buade,  after  Frontenac,  must  have  been  entered.  It 
led  into  the  market  place  of  Notre  Dame,  between  the  Presbytery, 
the  cemetery  to  which  Bishop  Saint  Vallier  transferred  the  dead 
from  the  old  burying  ground  on  Mountain  Hill,  and  the  Cathedral 
to  the  right,  and  a  block  of  houses  to  the  left  which  was  built  when 
the  Huron  fort,  that  occupied  the  ground  between  Buade  Street 
and  the  Place  d'Armes,  was  abandoned  on  the  removal  of  the 
Hurons  to  St.  Foy.  But  the  small  block  of  ground  between  the 
Market  Place  and  the  present  St.  x\nn  Street  seems  to  have  been, 
the  most  populous  section  of  the  Upper  Town,  for  there  was  little 
room  for  houses  between  the  Jesuit  property  and  that  of  the  Hotel 
Dieu,  or  between  the  Jesuits'  gardens  and  those  of  the  Ursulines. 
St.  John  Street,  the  Rue  d'Aiguillon,  and  the  Cote  d'Abrahani 
were  the  highways  to  the  Recollet  Monastery  of  Notre  Dame  des 
Anges,  subsecjuently  the  General  Hospital  of  Saint  \^allier,  and 
these  streets  or  roads  were  built  upon  from  the  earliest  times. 
According  to  the  census  of  1681,  twice  as  many  families  made 
their  homes  in  the  Lower  Town  as  in  the  Upper. 

The  steeple  of  the  Cathedral  rose  conspicuously  above  the  town 
(the  tower  and  fagade  of  the  basilica  as  they  appear  to-day  were 
built  during  the  last  century),  and  those  of  the  chapels  of  the 
Seminary,  the  Jesuit  College,  the  Ursuline  nunnery,  the  Hotel 
Dieu  and  the  Recollet  Monastery  pointed  heavenwards  over  the 
one-storied  houses  standing  among  their  gardens  and  such  of 
the  trees  as  had  been  spared  from  the  forest  primeval,  which  still 
covered  much  of  the  space  now  occupied  by  the  Upper  Town 
itself.  A  portion  of  the  Ursuline  Convent  is  the  only  old  monas- 
tic building  remaining  substantially  unchanged,  for  its  last  ordeal 
by  fire  occurred  in  1686.  The  one-storied  Hospital  of  the  Grey 
Nuns,  the  Hotel  Dieu,  as  it  existed  in  1700,  was  completely 
destroyed  by  an  incendiary  fire  in  1755.  The  Recollet  Church 
stood  facing  on  the  Place  d'Armes.  It  had  been  built  under  pro- 
test from  Bishop  Laval,  was  battered  almost  to  pieces  by  the  bom- 
bardment of  1759,  and  was  finallv  burnt  in  1796.     De  Gaspe,  in 


Bishop's  Palace,  from  Kichard  Short's  drawing,  1759. 


The  Chapel  of  the  Bishop's  Palace,  where  the 

First  House  of  Assembly  met  in  1792. 

From  Bourne's  Picture  of  Quebec, 


Intendant's  Palace,  as  rebuilt  after  the  hre  of  1713. 
From  Smart's  drawing,  1769, 


Medal  Struck  in  Commemoration  of 
Admiral  Phips'  Defeat  in  1792. 


THE  INTENDANT  S  PALACE.  499 

his  Memoirs,  gives  a  graphic  account  oi'  liis  l)()yish  recollection  of 
the  fire,  which  originated  in  Judge  Monk's  stables  on  St.  Louis 
Street.  The  wind  was  high  and  the  sparks  endangennl  tlie  I'rsu- 
line  Convent.  The  monks  were  so  busy  helping  the  nuns  that 
they  neglected  to  protect  their  own  property.  Fire  cauglil  in  tlie 
roof  of  their  church.  In  face  of  the  clearest  evidence  to  the 
contrary,  De  Gaspe  says,  it  was  firmly  believed  by  many  that  the 
British  Government  had  set  fire  to  the  monastery  in  oi-dcr  lo  con- 
fiscate the  land  on  which  it  stood. 

The  ground  covered  by  the  St.  Louis  suburb  was  in  the  coun- 
try. The  Meadows  (La  \^acherie),  under  the  Cliff,  reached  by 
the  Cote  d'Abrahani,  were  the  common  pasturage  of  the  town  folk, 
but  they  were  gradually  invaded  by  houses  and  converted  into  the 
suburb  of  St.  Roch  before  the  close  of  the  next  half  century.  The 
other  road  from  the  town  to  the  St.  Charles  \'alley  still  l^ears  the 
name  which  was  originally  conferred  upon  it — Palace  Hill,  as  it 
led  down  to  the  Intendant's  Palace.  The  situation  of  this,  the  Par- 
liament House  of  New  France  and  the  Residence  of  the  Intendant, 
was  probably  determined  by  the  convenience  it  offered  of  landing 
stores  from  the  water ;  for  the  Litendant,  besides  being  President 
of  the  Council,  was  the  fiscal  agent  of  the  Colony,  and  the  public 
warehouses  and  workshops,  as  well  as  the  Treasury,  were  under 
his  control.  The  buildings  erected  by  Intendant  de  Meulles  in  1684 
were,  according  to  La  Potherie,  480  feet  in  length.  They  stood  in 
about  ten  acres  of  ground,  laid  out  as  gardens,  on  the  river  front. 
The  first  palace  fell  a  prey  to  fire  in  January,  17 13,  when  Intendant 
Begon  and  his  wife  with  difficulty  escaped  the  flames  which 
destroyed  his  household  effects.  It  was  rebuilt,  but  an  evil  fate 
seemed  to  pursue  it.  The  government  stores  which  were  accom- 
modated in  buildings  adjacent  to  the  Palace  were  used  by  the  last 
Intendant  Bigot  to  rob  the  Government,  and  fill  his  pockets,  at 
the  sacrifice  of  the  Colony.  The  whole  group  of  buildings  was 
battered  into  a  ruin  by  the  gims  of  the  Palace  Gate  Battery,  when 
Arnold's  troop,  which  had  occupied  it  as  a  barracks,  were  dis- 
lodged in  1775  :  and  what  remained  was  almost  nbliterated  by  the 
great  fire  of  1845.  The  original  palace  grounds  had  been  reserved 
by  the  Imperial  Government  as  a  wood-yard,  and  the  fuel,  catch- 


500  QUEBEC   IX    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

ing  fire,  continued  to  burn  for  weeks.  Strange  to  say,  all  the 
masonry  that  remains  of  the  historic  structure  must  be  sought 
for  in  Boswell's  Brewery,  on  the  site  where  Intendant  Talon 
erected  the  first  Canadian  brewery,  converted  for  a  time  into  a 
meeting  place  for  the  Sovereign  Council,  while  the  palace  designed 
by  the  Intendant  de  Meulles  was  building. 

The  most  conspicuous  as  well  as  the  most  interesting  building 
was  the  Chateau  of  St.  Louis,  separated  from  the  Recollet  Church 
by  the  Place  d'Armes ;  for  the  citadel  which  to-day  crowns  Cape 
Diamond  was  not  yet  built,  that  prominent  point  being  defended 
merely  by  a  not  inconspicuous  cavalier.  The  traveller's  eye  must 
then  have  turned  irresistibly,  as  the  thought  of  the  historical 
student  now  does,  to  the  Chateau  and  the  Fort  of  St.  Louis. 

The  Chateau  of  St.  Louis,  which  overhung  the  Cliff  at  the  close 
of  the  century,  covered  probably  the  site  of  the  little  wooden  fort 
built  by  Champlain  in  1620.*  But  the  fort  was  hardly  built 
before  he  recognized  the  need  of  a  stronger  and  larger  forti- 
fication, within  which  the  whole  population  could  take  refuge 
in  case  of  attack.  He  therefore  built  in  1624  a  fort  of  greater  size 
in  a  more  extensive  and  better  defended  enclosure,  using  the  ma- 
terial of  the  existing  stockade  and  blockhouse.  "Still,"  as  he  said, 
"he  could  build  only  of  fascines,  earth  and  wood,  of  which,  never- 
theless, he  could  make  a  good  job.  awaiting  the  day  when  more 
substantial  structures  of  stone  and  mortar  would  be  created."  That 
day  came  when,  in  1647,  M.  de  Montmagny  commenced  a  resi- 
dence, a  stone  guard  house,  and  a  barracks.  A  memorial  of  his 
work  remains  to  this  day  in  a  keystone,  on  which  is  chiselled  a 
cross  of  the  Order  of  St.  John  of  Malta,  of  which  he  was  a  Com- 
mander, and  the  date,  1647.  The  stone  was  dug  up  in  1784,  and 
now,  after  many  vicissitudes,  it  is  built  into  the  outer  wall  of  the 
Hotel  Frontenac.  Montmagny  was  succeeded  bv  Governor 
d'Aillebout,  who  completed  his  predecessor's  plans ;  and  subse- 
quently  seven   Governors   lived  and   transacted   the   state   afiFairs 


*Some  contend  that  the  first  fort  was  on  the  site  of  the  old  Bishop's 
Palace,  as  being  more  accessible.  To  it,  in  1623.  they  claim  he  cut  a  road  tip 
th'  steep  mountainside,  following  the  present  Mountain  Street,  which  then 
was  a  mere  forest  trail,  just  cleared  sufficiently  to  permit  his  dragging  to 
his   stockade   some  small   culverins   from   his   ships. 


THE  CIIATF.AU    RE-BUILT.  5OI 

of  all  New  France  in  this  Chateau  of  St.  Louis — no  longer  the 
Fort  of  St.  Louis. 

It  was  an  unimposing  one-storied  stone  building  with  a  steep 
roof,  built  on  a  stone  foundation,  part  of  which  still  supports  the 
northeast  end  of  the  Terrace.  Its  situation  and  the  view  from 
the  river  windows  tilled  Frontenac  with  admiration  ;  but  the  build- 
ing itself  was  a  most  undignified  abode  for  the  Governor  of  a  great 
colony ;  moreover  its  successive  occupants,  alwavs  hoping  for 
something  better,  had  allowed  it  to  fall  into  a  sad  condition  of  dis- 
repair, so  that  when  the  Count  and  his  household  occupied  it,  he 
found  it  to  be  hardly  habitable.  In  1681  he  implored  the  home 
authorities  to  lay  out  "a  little  money  in  rebuilding  at  least  the 
defences."  for  "the  walls  had  tumbled  down,  there  were  no  gates, 
and  even  the  guard  house  was  a  heap  of  rubbish."  Yet  nothing 
was  done  till  Frontenac  returned  to  Canada  for  his  second  term. 

Two  incompetent  men  filled  the  interval  between  his  two 
administrations ;  but  one  of  them,  the  Marquis  Denonville,  had  at 
least  the  courage  to  build,  without  authority  from  Versailles,  a 
powder  magazine  just  outside  the  yard  of  the  Chateau.  The 
powder  had  hitherto  been  stored  in  the  Chateau  itself.  This  small 
magazine,  with  its  stone  partitions  and  its  conical  stone  roof,  was 
afterwards  enclosed  by  Frontenac  within  the  walls  of  the  Fort.  It 
was  subsequently  built  into  the  new  Chateau,  commenced  by  Gov- 
ernor Haldimand  in  1783  :  was  used  by  the  Provincial  Registrar 
for  the  storing  of  documents,  and  ultimately  degraded  into  a 
kitchen  for  the  Normal  School,  which  was  lodged  in  the  Haldi- 
mand Chateau  prior  to  the  sale  of  that  building  a  dozen  years  or 
so  ago  to  the  Frontenac  Hotel  Company.   * 

When  Frontenac  was  sent  back  by  the  King  in  1689,  as  the 
only  man  capable  of  coping  with  the  Indian  situation,  he  found 
the  old  Chateau  even  in  worse  plight  than  when  he  left  it.  A  year 
or  two  later  he  felt  himself  entitled  to  adopt  a  resolute  tone 
and  insist  on  its  reconstruction,  for  he  had  not  only  frightened  the 
savage.s  nuo  isiU^mis.sion,  but  had   driven  Tliips  and  his  .New  Juig- 


*  For  very  full  .ind  interesting  details  see  Ernest  diignnn's  J.e  Fort  ct  le 
Chateau  Saiiit  Louis. 


502  QUEBEC    IX   THE  SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

land  fleet  out  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  and  saved  Canada  to  France 
for  another  sixty-nine  years. 

It  was  three  years  after  this  heroic  defence  that  the  Court  of 
Versailles  was  shamed  into  allowing  the  valiant  old  noble  to  build 
a  new  fort  and  a  new  Chateau,  and  only  after,  in  a  despatch  dated 
September  15,  1692,  he  had  said:  "I  shall  be  exceedingly  fortunate 
if  I  am  not  buried  under  its  ruins  before  the  repairs  are  under- 
taken, as  a  high  wind  may  at  any  time  blow  it  down  about  my 
ears."  He  had  transmitted  plans  of  the  fort  and  the  city  fortifica- 
tions which  he  wished  to  build,  and  had  also  sent  back  to  France 
the  Sieur  de  Villebon,  the  engineer  who  had  been  commissioned  to 
aid  him,  that  he  might  lay  his  scheme  before  the  great  Vauban,  and 
receive  his  suggestions.  At  last  12,000  francs  were  appropriated 
to  the  building  of  the  Chateau,  and  this  at  a  time  when  Louis  XIW 
w^as  squandering  the  resources  of  France  on  the  Palace  and  Park  of 
\''ersailles.  The  great  monarch  would  not  live  in  the  sumptuous  Pal- 
ace of  St.  Germain,  with  its  glorious  outlook  over  the  Paris  Basin, 
because  he  could  not  enjoy  the  view  without  seeing  St.  Denis  and 
being  reminded  that,  sooner  or  later,  the  Abbey  there  must  be  his 
last  resting  place.  Though  the  Count  did  not  live  to  see  his  plan? 
completed,  part  of  the  new  chateau  was  occupied  by  him.  and  he 
on  the  28th  of  November,  1698,  ended  his  active  life  in  it  at 
the  age  of  seventy-eight.  The  Chateau  was  finished  two  years 
after  Frontenac's  death.  It  was  then  that  La  Potherie  saw  it,  as 
a  two-storied  building  of  150  feet,  opening  on  a  terrace,  which 
overlooked  the  Lower  Town  and  the  Basin.  The  line  of  the  eleva- 
tion towards  the  river  was  broken  by  two  shallow  wings,  and 
two  pavilions  projected  from  the  front  on  to  the  palace  yard.  No 
money  was  wasted  on  architectural  decoration,  for  the  original 
appropriation  had  been  insufficient  to  roof  it  in  ;  and  M.  de  Cal- 
lieres,  Frontenac's  successor,  forwarded  by  the  fall  ship  in  1699  a 
petition,  begging  most  urgently  for  an  additional  sum  of  6,000 
francs  wherewith  to  complete  the  structure. 

A  wing  w-as  built  in  1723,  and  in  1808,  the  Chateau,  which  had 
again  fallen  into  a  state  of  dilapidation,  was  renovated  and 
enlarged,  at  the  expense  of  the  Province  of  Lower  Canada, 
and  a  third  storv  was  added.     It  then  again  became  the   resi- 


CHATEAU  ST.  LOUIS.  !698. 


Elevation  of  the  Chateau  as  rebuih  by  Frontenac  and  De  Callieref 


Cliateau  as  destroyed  by  fire  in  1884. 
From  Hawkins'  Picture  of  Quebec. 


FORTIFICATIONS  503 

dence  of  the  British  Governor-General,  and  so  remained   till  de- 
stroyed by  fire  one  cokl  January  day  in  1834. 

According  to  Le  Clercq,  whom  Charlevoix  closely  follows,  the 
fortifications  at  the  time  of  Phips'  attack  consisted  of  a  double 
line  of  palisades,  starting  under  the  cliff  at  the  spot  known  as  the 
Sault  au  Alatelot,  where  a  battery  of  three  guns  was  mounted. 
Thence  it  stretched  along  the  beach  of  the  St.  Charles  to  the  Palais. 
From  the  Palais  the  palisades  ascended  the  abrupt  precipice,  and 
encircled  the  Upper  Town  to  the  base  of  Cape  Diamond.  The 
Sault  au  JVIatelot  Battery  was  reinforced  during  the  siege.  Sev- 
eral batteries  were  mounted  along  the  cliff  overlooking  the  St. 
Lawrence,  and  one  was  posted  near  Denis'  Mill  on  Mount  Carmel. 
The  small  range  and  lack  of  precision  of  the  guns  of  that  day  ren- 
dered it  necessary  to  be  as  near  the  enemy  as  possible,  as  is  evi- 
denced by  the  planting  of  two  batteries  on  wharves  extending  into 
the  river  to  defend  the  landing  at  the  Cul  de  Sac.  These  batteries 
consisted  of  three  eighteen-pound  guns  each.  There  were  no 
gates  to  the  town,  but  the  roads  leading  to  it  were  obstructed  by 
barricades  of  wood  and  sandbags.  Mountain  Hill,  which  was 
deemed  the  most  vulnerable  point,  was  protected  by  three  such 
lines  of  defence.  During  the  progress  of  the  siege,  when  it  was 
evident  that  a  landing  would  not  be  attempted  on  the  river  front, 
a  battery  of  three  guns  was  erected  at  the  entrance  leading  from 
the  St.  Charles,  probably  near  the  present  Palace  Gate. 

Doughty  claims  that  Frontenac  in  1692  built  a  wall  which  was 
continuous,  following  the  summit  of  the  cliff  from  the  Chateau 
to  Palace  Hill.  He  further  describes,  from  a  copy  of  Frontenac's 
plans  in  his  possession,  a  wall  starting  from  the  present  Chateau 
Frontenac  Hotel,  running  westward  l)etween  Mont  Carnul  and 
St.  Louis  Streets,  across  Haldimand  Hill  and  thence  curving  west 
into  St.  Louis  Street  on  reaching  the  corner  of  St.  I^rsule  Street ; 
thence  running  northwestward  inside  the  line  of  St.  I^rside  .Street, 
and  tending  more  and  more  in  a  northerly  direction,  through  the 
intersection  of  Ste.  Anne  and  .St.  Angele  Streets,  to  the  lower 
end  of  St.  Stanislas  Street,  and  ternu'nating  at  Palace  Hill.  The 
plan  on  the  opposite  page  shows  a  vicille  enceinte,  which  corre- 
sponds somewhat  to  these  lines  on  the  west  of  the  city,  but  does 


504  QUEBEC    IX    THE   SEVEXTEENT'T    CEXTURV. 

not  show  any  fortifications  to  the  north  of  the  Chateau,  or  south 
01  west  of  the  Battery  of  the  Chateau.  Frontenac's  fortifica- 
tions of  1692-1693,  though  said  to  have  been  of  stone,  were 
rapidly  built,    and  w-ere  probably  not  very  enduring. 

Frontenac  made  plans,  and  plenty  of  them,  for  extensive  forti- 
fications, but  most  of  them  remained  on  paper,  though,  according 
to  Doughty,  some  were  actually  built.  The  permission  to  recon- 
struct the  fort  of  St.  Louis  was  cancelled  in  1693 ;  but  fortunately 
the  order  arrived  too  late;  Frontenac  explaining  that,  having 
received  news  of  further  designs  on  Canada  by  the  English,  he  had 
pressed  the  work  with  all  speed,  in  accordance  with  previous  per- 
mission, and  had  almost  completed  it  when  the  order  to  ex- 
pend nothing  further  on  defenses  was  received.  The  govern- 
ment of  France  was  galvanized,  by  fear,  into  taking  more  active 
measures  of  defense  after  Admiral  Walker's  abortive  attempt  to 
take  Quebec  in  17 13.  It  was,  nevertheless,  only  after  the  con- 
quest of  Canada,  and  not  till  1823,  that  Quebec  became,  at  the 
instigation  of  Wellington,  the  Gibraltar  of  America. 

The  earthworks  or  walls,  laid  down  on  tlie  map  of  1756.  which 
we  have  reproduced,  as  ancient  fortifications,  evidently  en- 
croached on  the  present  city  limits,  leaving  the  present  Esplanade 
outside  the  walls,  and  intersecting  the  property  of  the  Ursu- 
line  nuns.  We  are  not  surprised,  therefore,  to  find  that  they 
sent  a  humble  but  firm  protest  to  the  Alinister.  'SI.  de  Pontchar- 
train,  setting  forth  that  the  engineers  had  cut  right  through  their 
yard  and  garden ;  that  four  acres  of  forest  trees  had  been  cut 
down ;  that  four  more  acres  were  stripped  to  the  very  rock 
to  supply  earth  for  the  fortifications :  that,  in  addition,  their 
pasture  land  was  absorbed,  their  barn  and  stable  demolished,  and 
two  houses,  which  yielded  a  rental  of  16  francs  each,  destroyed. 
They  complained  that,  to  replace  the  property  thus  confiscated, 
they  had  been  obliged  to  pay  for  land  alone  1,200  francs,  and 
vet  they  had  received  in  compensation  only  1,500  francs. 

To  reduce  the  cost  of  the  fortifications  the  work  was  done  by 
forced  labor,  to  the  great  contentment  of  the  King,  but  to  the  great 
dissatisfaction  of  the  inhabitants.  The  construction  of  fortifications 
was  in  the  hands  of  the  militarv.  and  in  1706.  M.  de  Louvienv,  the 


^: 


A"    Let  C*it^tiral/r 


%. 


I„  Kr.fr^ur 


r:^-iT-^vrji;!:i 


<■    j^> 


.%     .*:„<^ 


Picture  t>f  Quebec,  from  La  Putherie. 


W-j/  k-..-'X-.-l«  1  J.:-\.-JrJ.  «'»;•.;•■•  nr  .? //.•-(-.tX-.-v.-  ii  Xvi-.-,':-.' ,;.  '. r  / 


Map  of  Quebec,  published  in  Nurnberg  in  1756. 


THE  OFFICIAL  CLASS.  505 

commandant,  reports  that  the  corz'cc  was  hxed  at  five  days'  labor 
for  a  man  and  horse.  Men  without  liorses  had  to  work  ten 
days,  if  they  supported  themselves,  or  fifteen  if  they  received 
rations.  The  religious  communities  were  required  to  contribute 
their  share  of  labor ;  and  when  the  Recollets,  on  the  plea  of  pov- 
erty, refused,  the  Commandant  took  the  ground  that,  as  they  had 
been  endowed  with  valuable  property,  as  they  sold  beer,  sailed  two 
ships,  and  let  out  a  horse  for  hire,  they  should  also  bear  their 
share  of  the  public  burden.  When  every  one  was  making  money 
for  himself,  and  civil  servants  and  military  officers  had  all  turned 
traders,  friars  and  Jesuits  may  be  judged  leniently  if  they  helped 
out  the  revenues  of  their  orders  by  a  little  buying  and  selling; 
which  it  would  seem  they  did,  if  we  may  judge  by  the  charges 
of  iUicit  trading  freely  bandied  about  at  home  and  hurled  at 
one  another  across  the  sea.  The  only  body  of  men  whose  hands 
were  so  clean  that  suspicion  never  touched  them  were  the  priests 
of  the  Seminary  and  the  parochial  clergy. 

The  garrison  of  Quebec,  as  we  have  seen,  was  small ;  but  the 
city,  though  meagrely  supplied  with  troops,  was  abundantly  pro- 
vided with  civil  officials.  If  Canada  did  not  prosper,  it  was  not  for 
lack  of  bureaucratic  organization  in  France  and  the  colony.  The 
colonial  office  in  France  became  in  course  of  time  a  veritable  re- 
pository of  accurate  statistics,  and  a  council  for  the  discussion 
of  colonial  topics  ;  but  this  was  somewhat  later  than  the  date  of  our 
narrative.  The  Sovereign  Council  of  Canada,  with  its  seven  mem- 
bers and  its  official  stafif,  was  the  governing  body,  as  well  as  the 
highest  court  of  justice.  It  heard  complaints  even  of  the  most  triv- 
ial kind,  made  laws,  registered  the  King's  edicts,  tried  cases  in  ap- 
peal, and  in  general  fulfilled  functions  very  similar  to  those  of  the 
Parliament  of  Paris.  The  Council  had  on  its  creation  appointed 
local  judges  who  were  enjoined  to  dispense  justice  without  too 
much  technicality  (sans  chicane)  or  lengthy  procedure,  but  these 
were  abolished  in  1677,  and  replaced  by  an  inferior  court  for  the 
trial  of  civil  and  criminal  cases,  that  of  the  Prcvotc  royalc.  presided 
over  bv  the  Lieutenant-Gencral.  The  crown  business  was  con- 
ducted by  a  Procureur  du  Roi  and  a  Grand  Prevot — Provost 
Marshal.     A  recorder,  two  notaries  and  U\o  bailiffs  were  attached 


506  QUEBEC   IX    THE   SEVEXTEEXTII    CEXTURV. 

to  the  court,  and  the  Grand  Prevot  had  two  deputies  and  an  archer 
or  constable.*  After  1677  the  jMarechaussee,  or  Marshalsea  Court 
for  tracing-  and  punishing  vagabonds,  was  estabhshed.  Six 
mounted  poHce  were  its  active  officers.  The  Admiralty  Court  was 
not  opened  until  17 17.  Judges  were  but  poorly  paid,  receiving 
only  400  livres  salary,  but  they  were  relieved  from  the  cost  of 
wearing  gowns  and  caps. 

In  addition  to  these  legislators,  there  was  a  Grand  Maitrc  dcs 
Emix  et  Forcts — the  Master  of  Streams  and  Forests  ;  an  Intend- 
ant  of  Commerce  and  Marine,  a  Commissary  of  Marine,  a  Keeper 
of  the  Royal  Treasury,  a  Comptroller  of  the  Beaver  Trade,  the 
King's  Clerk,  a  Commissioner  General  of  Provisions,  a  Surveyor- 
General  and  other  officials.  As  all  of  them  were  poorly  paid,  not 
a  few  considered  themselves  justified  in  supplementing  their  in- 
come by  such  means,  fair  or  foul,  as  might  offer. 

Of  all  the  officers  sent  out  from  France  the  Intendant  had  the 
best  opportunity  of  enriching  himself,  though  few — be  it  said  to 
their  credit — took  advantage  of  their  position.  The  first  Intend- 
ant, Talon,  has  already  been  described  as  a  man  of  unimpeachable 
honesty  and  of  great  administrative  ability,  who  apprehended  more 
clearly  than  any  other  nominee  of  the  Government  at  A^ersaillcs 
the  real  needs  of  the  colony.  The  man  who  last  filled  the  office, 
Bigot,  was  a  scoundrel  and  libertine  in  private  life,  and  a  robber 
of  the  state  and  people.  Of  the  intervening  occupants  of  the  office, 


*The  position  of  a  notary  in  Canada  has  always  been,  and  is  to-day, 
very  different  from  that  of  the  holder  of  a  notarial  commission  in  the 
United  States.  He  is  a  member  of  a  distinct  learned  profession,  like  the 
Writer  to  the  Signet  in  Scotland.  He  draws  deeds,  marriage  contracts, 
wills,  and  thus  performs  many  of  the  offices  of  an  attorney.  He  is 
the  guardian  of  the  original  deeds  which  he  draws,  which  must  never 
pass  out  of  his  keeping,  and  which  after  his  death  are  deposited  in  the 
Registrar's  office,  becoming  thus  official  documents  accessible  to  the  public 
in  all  future  time.  The  first  notarial  deed  is  said  to  have  been  drawn  in 
Canada  on  August  nth,  1647,  by  Laurent  Baurman.  Long  prior  to  that, 
however,  Champlain  had  created  the  office  of  Greffier,  or  register,  and 
appointed  to  it  a  certain  Nicolas.  The  profession  has  always  been  numer- 
ous. In  the  census  of  1681,  besides  the  two  official  notaries  attached  to  the 
court,  five  others  seem  to  have  found  employment  in  the  town,  or  one  to 
something  less  than  300  inhabitants. 


o    ^    -*     ^ 


WESTERN    EXPLORATION    AND    TRADE.  507 

Jacques  Duchesneau,  Frontenac's  enemy,  fulfilled  most  efficiently 
one  of  the  functions  for  which  it  was  created,  that  of  a  spy  and 
check  on  the  Governor.  The  office  in  France  was  created  hy  Riche- 
lieu, and  the  incumbent  was  to  be  the  supervisor  of  internal  taxes 
and  of  public  works;  but  under  Colbert  he  was  endowed  with, 
or  at  least  came  to  assume  control  over,  judicial  and  eccle- 
siastical affairs  as  well.  The  expansion  of  the  Intendant's  power 
in  Old  France  was  reflected  in  the  greater  importance  and  influ- 
ence which  these  officers  arrogated  to  themselves  in  New  France, 
where  they  finally  eclipsed  the  Governor  himself.  But  while  the 
Intendants  were  entrusted  with  high  administrative  functions,  and 
were  in  some  cases  men  of  marked  ability  and  framers  of  the  most 
important  measures  passed  by  the  Sovereign  Council,  it  was  none 
the  less  their  duty  to  draw  up  ordinances  for  the  most  trifling 
regulations  of  city  and  country  life. 

As  every  ship  had  to  be  provided  with  a  doctor,  the  medical 
profession  was  always  well  represented  in  the  city.  The  city 
was  supplied  with  an  abundance  of  tradesmen.  There  seems 
to  have  been  even  a  superfluity  in  some  branches.  There  were, 
for  example,  no  less  than  ten  carpenters.  Horses,  however, 
were  so  few  that  there  was  no  need  of  a  saddler.  Apparently  the 
French  housewives  did  not  bake  at  home,  as  there  were  three 
bakers  and  two  pastry  cooks  to  three  butchers ;  and  poor  as  the 
citizens  were,  they  would  not  wear  home-made  clothes,  for  there 
were  nine  tailors  in  the  town.  Priests  and  nuns  were  numerous, 
but  all  were  more  or  less  usefully  employed. 

The  stirring  events  of  the  closing  years  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  from  the  beginning  of  Frontenac's  first  administration  to 
the  end  of  his  second,  must  have  filled  Quebec  with  exuberant 
excitement.  Of  the  great  men  who  have  left  their  footprints  over 
half  the  continent,  a  certain  number  were  of  European  birth,  but 
most  of  those  who  went  forth,  inspired  by  the  newly  awakened 
spirit  of  exploration  which  a  dawning  realization  of  the  vastness 
of  the  new  world  had  stimulated,  were  natives  of  the  colony.  It 
was  to  the  progress  of  western  exploration  that  Quebec  owed  in 
large  measure  its  growth  in  commercial  importance.  Though  the 
furs  were  not  sold  bv  the  Indians  or  the  coureurs  de  hois  in  Quebec 


508  yUEBEC    IN    THE  SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

it  was  the  seat  of  exchange,  and  the  headquarters  of  all  the  princi- 
pal mercantile  houses.  The  policy  of  the  Iroquois,  to  deflect  the 
trade  in  peltries  from  the  northern  route  via  the  Ottawa  to  the 
Hudson  through  their  own  territory,  must  therefore  have  been 
a  matter  of  anxious  interest  to  the  merchants  of  Quebec ;  and  nat- 
urally Courcelle's  plan  to  intercept  the  furs  of  the  Lakes  at  a 
fort  built  at  the  discharge  of  Lake  Ontario  would  meet  with  their 
hearty  approval.  But  when  the  scheme  took  shape  under  Fron- 
tenac,  and  an  arrangement  was  made  by  him  with  La  Salle,  by 
which  the  latter  was  to  enjoy  certain  exclusive  trading  privileges 
on  condition  of  his  rebuilding  the  fort  and  manning  it,  suspicion, 
bred  of  jealousy,  was  aroused  in  the  mercantile  community ;  and, 
in  La  Salle's  absence,  the  fort  was  seized  on  behalf  of  his  cred- 
itors. Finally  Frontenac's  successor,  Denonville,  failing  to 
appreciate  the  strong  strategical  position  which  the  fort  occupied 
from  a  mercantile,  as  well  as  a  military  point  of  view,  dismantled 
and  abandoned  it. 

Poor  La  Salle !  One  can  hardly  follow  his  career  without 
comparing  it  with  that  of  more  modern  adventurers  of  the  same 
type.  Just  as  events  in  their  relative  importance  cannot  be  prop- 
erly gauged  by  contemporaries,  so  the  character  and  achievements 
of  men  can  be  adequately  appraised  only  when  their  life-histories 
have  been  told,  and  the  totality  of  their  work  and  influence  comes 
distinctly  into  view.  La  Salle  was  to  his  contemporaries  a  more 
or  less  unscrupulous  trader  and  political  schemer.  To  subsequent 
generations  he  stands  forth  conspicuously  among  the  great  makers 
of  America,  as  Rhodes  will  probably  do  among  the  builders  of 
Africa.  Each  made  great  mistakes,  each  had  great  faults,  but 
their  mistakes  and  their  defects  of  character  become  obscured  in 
the  blaze  of  great  deeds  accomplished,  and  the  still  greater 
achievement  which  the  example  of  high  purpose,  masterfully  ful- 
filled, stirs  a  later  generation  to  attempt  and  consummate. 

The  country  folk,  or  habitants,  were  poor.  Few  houses  had 
glass  windows,  the  substitute  being  paper.  Every  habitant  had 
his  little  flower  and  kitchen  garden,  in  which  onions  occupied  a 
large  space.  Though  the  potato  w^as  in  use  in  New  England,  it 
was  still  held  in  contempt  both  in  Canada  and  in  Old  France.    The 


ECONOMIC    CONDITIONS.  5^9 

Canadian  farmer  was  not  then  allowed  to  raise  his  own  tobacco, 
lest  he  should  interfere  with  the  int(>rests  of  France's  West  Indian 
Islands.     This  restriction  was  not  removed  till  the  administration 
of  Intendant  Hocquart.     The  country  farmer  at  that  period  was 
so  dependent  on  France  for  many  of  the  staples  of  life  that,  when 
the  ship  "Seine,"  in  1705,  with  Bishop  Saint  Vallier  on  board,  was 
captured   by   the   English,   the   colony,   while   it   could   cheerfully 
resign  itself  to  the  detention  of  its  Bishop,  was  almost  driven  to 
despair  and  famine  by  the  loss  of  the  ship's  cargo.     The  laws 
against  colonial  manufacturing  and  colonial  trade  were  only  then 
being   sufficiently    relaxed   to   make    it    legal    for   the    farmer    to 
adopt  that  primitive  mode  of  life,  of  which  vestiges  are  still  visible 
in  the  more  remote  parishes,  where  each   family  raises  its  own 
food,  grows  its  own  flax,  weaves  its  own  linen,  shears  its  ow!i 
sheep,  converts  the  wool  on  domestic  looms  into   coarse  cloth, 
and  in  general  provides   for  all  its  necessities  without  drawing 
on  the  outer  world.     Flax  had  been  recently  introduced,   for  it 
ai)pears  in   1707,  in  the  Edict  on  Tithes,  as  one  of  the  articles 
of  cultivation   from  which   the   Church   derived   revenue.      Dogs 
were  more  commonly  used  as  draught  animals  than  at  present. 
They  were  harnessed  to  the  sledges  of  the  rich  and  to  the  sleighs 
of  the  poor,  for  horses  were  still  rare.     The  few  horses  in  use 
by  the   farmers  were,  like  the  horses  in  the   Northwest  to-day, 
so  inured  to  cold  that  they  were  turned  out  in  winter  to  provide 
for  themselves  until  the  snow  became  too  deep  ;  and  when  more 
than    one    horse   was    harnessed    to   a    sleigh,    they    were    driven 
tandem,   as   is   still   the   case,   owing   to   the   narrowness   of   the 
snow  roads ;  while  oxen  were  bound  to  their  loads,  as  they  still 
are  in  some  places,  by  the  horns  instead  of  by  a  yoke. 

The  conservatism  of  the  Canadian  is  certainly  one  of  his  saving 
virtues.  It  is  strikingly  revealed  in  the  persistence  of  trifling 
customs  through  two  centuries.  For  instance,  the  habitants  arriv- 
ing overnight  in  the  old  days  with  their  small  stock  of  farm 
produce,  camped  on  the  river  bank  along  the  Cul  de  Sac.  where 
they  would  light  fires  for  culinary  or  other  purposes,  until  the 
practice  was  forbidden  by  an  ordinance  of  the  Council,  on  the 
ground  that  it  endangered  the  safety  of  the  Lower  Town.    Till  re- 


5IO  QUEBEC   IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

cently,  the  small  farmer  from  the  distant  i)arishes  on  the  south 
shore  never  entered  an  inn,  hut  slept  hy  the  roadside,  and  so  timed 
his  journey  that  he  came  during-  the  last  night  within  easy  reach  of 
the  early  market.  To  protect  the  city  from  fire,  a  chimney  tax  was 
imposed  in  1707,  and  the  size  of  chimneys  was  regulated.  The 
tax  was  expended  in  providing  leather  huckets,  which  were  to  he 
always  kept  full  of  water,  and  were  distributed,  24  at  the  Chateau, 
20  at  the  Intendant's  palace,  25  at  the  Jesuit  College,  20  at  the 
house  of  Fran(;ois  Hazeur,  the  finest  private  house  in  town,  on  the 
Place  Royale,  facing  the  harbor  and  in  view  of  the  Church  of 
Notre  Dame  de  la  Mctoire,  and  lastly  20  at  Aubert's  house  in  the 
Rue  Sault  au  Matelot,  then  the  most  populous  street  in  Quebec. 

The  tax,  it  would  seem,  left  a  balance,  which  was  expended  on 
the  repair  of  the  stairway  leading  from  the  Lower  to  the  Upper 
Town,  and  providing  it  with  a  gate  wide  enough  only  for  foot 
passengers,  thus  shutting  out  beasts  of  burden,  which  had  hereto- 
fore used  this  short  cut  to  the  detriment  of  the  steps.  A 
regular  ferry  between  the  city  and  Point  Levis  was  not  estab- 
lished until  1722,  when  a  ten  years'  contract  was  given  to  Sieur 
Lanouillier  for  boats  propelled  by  some  kind  of  mechanism,  un 
moulin  de  bateau.  The  old-fashioned  horse-boats  in  which  the  pad- 
dle-wheels were  turned  by  horses,  bv  means  of  a  rude  mechan- 
ical contrivance,  were  used  as  ferry  boats  for  nearly  half  a  century 
after  steam  was  employed  as  a  motive  power  upon  the  river. 

In  the  city  the  luxury  of  good  living  was  freely  indulged  in. 
Kalm  somewhat  later  tells  of  the  excellent  dinners  of  mfany 
courses  that  he  enjoyed  at  the  Jesuit  College  and  the  Ursuline 
Nunnery,  washed  down  with  an  abundance  of  good  claret.  The 
appetite  before  breakfast  was  whetted  by  a  glass  of  brandy,  but 
light  wines  were  the  beverage  most  indulged  in  by  men  who 
could  afford  them :  the  women  confined  themselves  to  choco- 
late and  coffee.  Beer  was  the  beverage  of  the  poor,  and  one  of 
Talon's  enterprises,  as  we  have  seen,  was  a  brewery  in  Quebec. 
The  tables  of  the  rich  were  well  served,  silver  forks  and  spoons 
being  laid  beside  each  plate  :  but  every  diner  was  supposed  to 
provide  his  own  knife,  a  survival  of  the  early  habits  of  the  hunter. 
The   bonnet — roits-e  in  Quebec  and   bleu  in   Montreal — was   the 


PRICES    REGULATED     BV     LAW,  KH 

habitant's  distinguishing-  article  of  dress,  and  still  hoick  its 
place  in  Canada,  while  in  France  it  has  been  relegated  to  the 
top  of  the  liberty  pole.  iMen  servants  were  plentiful,  but  women 
servants  so  scarce  that  even  wealthy  liousewives  had  often  to 
do  their  own  work. 

Pierre  Boucher,  who  was  sent  to  France  in  1662  to  plead  for 
reforms,  wrote  a  little  book  for  intending  emigrants  containing 
more  correct  information  than  we  are  apt  to  find  in  modern  docu- 
ments of  the  same  kind ;  for  while  he  admits  that  "good  people 
ma}-  live  in  Canada  very  contentedly,"  he  warns  "bad  people  not  to 
go,  because  they  are  too  closely  looked  after."  He  gave  the  world 
the  first  inforniation  of  petroleum  when  he  tells  of  a  "spring  in  the 
Iroquois  country  from  which  exudes  a  greasy  water  that  is  like  oil, 
and  that  is  used  in  many  cases  instead  of  oil."  He  gives  the 
price  of  light  wines  at  ten  sous  a  quart,  brandy  and  Spanish 
wines  at  thirty  sous  a  quart,  wheat  at  100  sous  a  bushel  of  sixty 
pounds,  though  he  says  it  sometimes  rose  to  120  sous.  Wages  in 
winter  were  twenty  sous  with  food ;  in  summer  thirty  sous  with 
food.  Clothes,  he  says,  were  about  twice  the  price  of  the  same 
article  in  France,  and  nioney  so  much  dearer  that  fifteen  sous  in 
France  would  go  as  far  as  twenty  sous  in  Canada. 

But  prices  rose  and  fell  even  in  a  community  where  they  ■'vere 
regulated  by  ordinances,  for  the  records  of  the  Council  show 
that  it  could  not  always  enforce  its  own  tariiT.  On  one  plea  and 
another  merchants,  charged  with  the  ofifence  of  selling  their  goods 
at  higher  than  tariff  prices,  escaped  with  light  fines.  Twenty- 
two  livres  was  an  insignificant  penalty  to  impose  on  Jacques  de 
la  Mothe  for  selling  his  claret  at  too  livres  the  harriqur\  when 
the  tarifif  price  was  60  livres :  and  his  tobacco  at  60  sous,  wlien  the 
tariff  price  was  40  sous.  There  were  even  corners  in  wheat,  for 
in  1668  it  was  so  scarce  that  190  bushels  brought  down  from 
Three  Rivers  were  held  at  seven  livres,  or  francs,  the  bushel,  till 
the  Jesuits,  who  had  a  stock  on  hand,  broke  the  market  by  selling 
theirs  at  five  francs. 


*The  baniquc  varied  in  the  different   provinces  of  France   from  200  to 
250  quarts. 


512  yUEUEC    IX    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

Laliontan  in  1685  puts  the  price  of  a  barriqttc  of  Bordeaux 
at  from  40  to  60  livres,  and  brandy  at  80  to  100  livres  ;  but  a 
glass  of  wine,  sold  over  the  bar,  cost  six  sous  of  French  money, 
and  a  drink  of  brandy  20  sous.  Sugar  cost  from  20  to  30  sous 
a  pound.''' 

The  Sovereign  Council  not  only  regulated  prices  of  merchan- 
dise and  of  beaver  skins,  but  filled  the  functions  of  a  municipal 
assembly.  There  are  ordinances  which  laid  down  rules  for  the 
tavern-keeper,  such  as  forbidding  wine  to  be  sold  with  meals 
except  by  permission ;  others  prescribed  the  exact  width  of 
streets,  such  as  that  which  requires  Ste.  Genevieve  Street  to  be 
eighteen  feet  clear  from  fence  to  fence ;  others  forbade  fire- 
wood from  being  piled  in  the  streets,  or  in  vacant  lots  between  the 
houses ;  and  prohibited  the  use  of  shingles  as  a  roofing  material 
except  on  dormer  windows.  Tin  soon  became  the  favorite  cover- 
ing, as  tin  plate  was  then  really  tin  plate,  being  coated  with  as 
much  as  five  per  cent,  of  the  unoxydizable  metal,  and  as  wood 
smoke  did  not  attack  it  the  old  roofs  remained  bright  as  silver  till 
the  second  half  of  the  last  century,  when  coal  came  into  partial 
use  as  domestic  fuel. 

The  cost  of  living  was  high,  if  luxuries  were  indulged  in; 
but  money  was  rapidly  made  in  trade  by  certain  favored 
classes,  and  Quebec,  being  the  center  of  trade,  as  well  as  of 
ecclesiastical  and  civil  power,  received  its  share  of  profits  from 
manv  sources :  while  Montreal,  being  nearer  the  sources  of  wealth 


*The  copper  currency  of  Canada  consisted  of  deniers,  worth  i/i2th  of  a 
sou ;  double  deniers,  worth  i/6th  of  a  sou,  and  the  Sou,  worth  i/20th  of 
a  livre,  or  a  franc.  The  ecru  was  worth  3  livres.  A  piece  of  money  known 
as  the  quart  d'ecu,  or   15  sous,  or  sols,  was  in  circulation. 

The  sou  differed  in  value,  as  did  the  livre  of  Paris  and  of  Tours,  but 
the  cheaper  sou  was  raised  to  the  value  of  the  standard  by  being  stamped 
with  £eur  dc  lis.  when  it  was  known  in  Canada,  and  referred  to  in  the 
ordinances  as  pieces  fapccs. 

If,  as  Boucher  says,  20  sous  in  France  were  worth  only  15  sous  in 
Canada,  money  was  at  a  premium  of  33  per  cent,  instead  of  25  per  cent. 
as  he  states;  but  he  probably  meant  that  a  15  sou  piece  would  buy  in  France 
as  much  as  20  sous  in  Canada.  See  interesting  Note  on  Currency  of 
Canada   in   Chapais'  "Jean   Talon,"   Page   214. 


SCANT  INTELLECTUAL  LL1;KKTV.  513 

— the  fur-bearing  regions  of  the  Ottawa  and  the  Lakes — was  not 
left  to  starve. 

There  was  no  printing  press  in  Canada  to  disseminate  truth 
and  falsehood,  to  preach  nioralily,  and  to  distribute  scandal.  The 
administration  discouraged  publicity  and  freedom  of  discussion, 
and  the  Church  was  at  one  with  the  State  on  that  question  ;  for 
though  in  1665  the  Jesuits  had  discussed  the  advisability  of  im- 
porting a  printing  press,  it  was  in  order  to  print  exclusively  Ics 
Uuigucs,  presumably  either  Greek  and  Latin  classics  or  l)ooks  in 
the  native  languages. 

This  absence  of  the  printing  press  coupled  with  a  close  censor- 
ship over  imported  literature,  and  the  prohibition  of  all  inter- 
course with  the  English  Puritans,  assisted  the  government  and  the 
Church  in  excluding  heresy.  Nevertheless  a  few  heretics  did 
find  admission,  some  as  soldiers,  but  more  as  clerks.  Laval  in 
1670  memorializes  Colbert  strongly  on  the  subject,  pointing  out 
that  French  merchants,  those  of  the  true  faith,  entrust  their 
interests  in  the  colony  to  dangerous  heretics,  who  insidiously 
diffused  their  influence,  and  by  their  behavior,  which  was  often 
unexceptionable,  weakened  the  popular  prejudice  against  their 
persons  and  professions.  Lest  these  theological  reasons  should 
not  carry  sufficient  weight,  he  drew  the  Minister's  attention 
to  the  danger  of  revolution  to  which  the  presence  of  a  large 
body  of  Protestants  in  the  colony  would  expose  the  State. 

If  any  heretics  remained  in  the  colony  it  was  not  for  lack  of 
warning  from  France,  for  the  King  in  a  letter  to  Dennnville  in 
1685  congratulated  himself  on  the  number  of  conversions  that 
had  been  made  in  France  through  the  cogent  arguments  brought 
to  bear  after  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes:  and  urged 
his  Lieutenant  to  use  soldiers  and  severity,  as  well  as  the  assis- 
tance of  the  Bishop,  in  persuading  the  few  heretics  in  the 
colony  to  abandon  their  pernicious  opinions.  Tn  the  same  dis- 
patch he  recommends  the  encouragement  of  the  wool  industry  and 
tanning.  The  King  as  an  administrator  could  pass  from  the  affairs 
of  this  world  to  those  of  the  next,  as  easily  as,  in  private  life, 
he  could  exchange  the  counsels  of  his  confessors  for  the  charms 
and  endearments  of  his  mistresses.     Fortunatelv  there,  were  so 


514  QUEDEC   IN   THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

few  Huguenots  in  Canada  on  whom  to  Ijillet  his  troops  that  the 
King,  however  wilhng  lie  might  l^e,  could  not  repeat  the  horrors 
of  the  dragonnadcs.  Canada's  history,  therefore,  has  not  been 
blotted,  nor  the  character  of  the  inhabitants  debased,  by  such 
horrors  as  were  committed  in  France  in  tlie  name  of  religion 
by  an  arbitrary  monarch,  under  the  inspiration  of  a  bigoted  woman 
and  a  vindictive  hierarchy.  Canada  suffered  commercially 
and  politically  from  the  exclusion  of  the  Huguenots,  but  her  peo- 
ple and  clergy  did  not  receive  into  their  veins  the  venom  of 
that  uncharitableness  which  is  the  bitter  fruit  of  religious  dis- 
sension. There  was  thus  a  homogeneity  in  the  population,  its 
habits  and  its  institutions,  which  should  have  made  the  colony 
powerful  and  able  to  resist  a  foreign  foe,  if  only  it  had  been  ade- 
quately supported  by  the  mother  country,  or  else  freely  allowed  to 
work  out  its  own  salvation.  But  while  no  assistance  was  extended 
to  it  from  France,  it  was  forbidden  to  help  itself;  and  the  inevita- 
ble happened.  Nevertheless  New  France  is  still  New  France,  and 
her  relations  to  the  neglectful  parent  are  well  expressed  by  Th. 
Bentzon  in  "Notes  de  Voyage."  "Canada,"  so  says  the  author, 
"reminds  me  of  a  widow,  who  after  a  passionate,  amorous 
marriage,  finds  in  a  second  matrimonial  experiment  the  safety, 
peace  and  material  advantage  which  result  from  alliance  with 
a  man  of  means  and  sober  habits.  Her  heart,  nevertheless, 
remains  in  the  keeping  of  her  first  love,  who,  despite  his  faults, 
worshipped  instead  of  merely  respecting  and  supporting  her.  She 
would  not,  it  is  true,  exchange  her  present  comfortable  estate 
for  those  joyous  days  of  youthful  madness,  still  she  sighs  when 
she  thinks  of  them,  and  even  takes  pleasure  in  bemoaning  her 
past  sufferings." 


CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

The  Struggle  for  the  Fur  Trade  of  Hudson  Bay;  the 

Quebec  Hudson  Bay  Companies,  and  a  Discussion 

on  Colonial  Policy. 

Two  names  appear  conspieuously  in  the  annals  of  trade  and 
exploration  in  the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth  century.  iMedard 
do  Chouart,  Sieur  des  Grosseilliers,  and  Pierre  Esprit,  the  Sieur 
Radisson,  were  more  closely  united  by  kindred  tastes  than  even 
by  family  ties ;  and  so  highly  were  they  esteemed  for  their 
energy  and  knowledge  that,  even  after  being  suspected  of 
treason,  they  were  received  back  into  favor  by  the  Canadian 
authorities.  Grosseilliers  was  married  to  Radisson's  sister, 
but  both  were  attracted  to  the  Indians  and  their  free,  un- 
trammeled  life,  and  both  had  in  a  great  measure  thrown 
off,  together  with  their  prejudices,  those  sentiments  of  patriotism 
and  honor,  the  absence  of  which  leaves  human  nature  ])oor  in- 
deed. Their  intercourse  with  the  Indians  of  the  Upper  Lakes  had 
instructed  them  more  or  less  accurately  as  to  the  geography  of  the 
land  lying  between  the  Lakes  and  the  Mississippi,  and  between 
the  Lakes  and  the  Hudson  Bay.  If  the  early  voyagers  and  mis- 
sionaries learned  so  little  of  the  more  remote  regions  of  the  conti- 
nent, it  was  owing  to  native  suspicion  and  secretiveness.  for  the 
knowledge  of  the  Indians  is  as  wide  as  their  wanderings,  and 
tlieir  power  of  observation  as  strong  as  their  memory.  Where  they 
could  have  given  minute  descriptions,  they  only  dropped  vague 
hints.  Whether  Grosseilliers  and  Radisson  had  actually  reached 
James  Bay  from  the  Height  of  Land  which  divides  the  Lakes 
from  that  sheet  of  water,  or  whether  they  derived  the  information 
from  the  Indians  who  hunted  there,  they  certainly  ascertained  that 
a  rich  field  for  traffic  in  furs  existed  in  the  coiuitry  to  the 
north,  which  the  English  claimed  by  right  of  discovery,  but 
which  they  had  not  actually  occupied.     It  is  believed  that  they 


5l6  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

proposed  to  the  agent  in  Quebec  of  the  old  company,  which  was 
then  moribund  and  about  to  receive  its  coup  dc  grace,  that  the 
company  should  equip  an  expedition  by  water  to  retrieve  its  for- 
tunes in  this  inexhaustible  and  productive  region ;  but  all  the 
thanks  they  got  was  a  fine  for  trading  without  a  license.  In 
disgust  they  carried  their  knowledge  and  enthusiasm  first  to 
Boston,  where,  through  Grosseilliers'  persuasion,  Capt.  Zachary 
Gillam  became  interested  in  the  fur  trade,  and  was  induced  to  sail 
his  ship  to  Hudson  Bay.  This  attempt  failed.  After  further 
disappointments  in  the  American  colonies  the  Huguenot  adven- 
turers so  inspired  the  English  commissioners,  then  in  New  Eng- 
land, with  their  own  enthusiasm,  that  these  officials  urged  them 
to  accompany  them  to  London.  There,  under  the  patronage  of 
Prince  Rupert,  and  with  the  pecuniary  aid  of  the  Prince,  and  other 
titled  and  untitled  notables,  two  ships  were  fitted  out  and  sailed 
in  1668  for  the  Bay.  Only  one,  the  "Nonesuch,"  owned  by  the 
same  Capt.  Zachary  Gillam  who  had  made  the  unsuccessful  at- 
tempt to  enter  the  Bay  in  1664,  reached  the  appointed  destination. 
Its  crew  wintered  at  the  mouth  of  Prince  Rupert  River,  near  the 
head  of  James  Bay,  and  not  over  150  miles  from  the  nearest 
French  settlements ;  built  Fort  Charles,  and  brought  back  their 
ship  with  so  rich  a  cargo  of  furs  that  the  foundation  of  the  Hud- 
son Bay  Company,  under  a  most  liberal  charter  from  Charles  II., 
was  the  result.  Prince  Rupert,  Radisson's  and  Grosselliers'  patron, 
was  the  first  Governor,  and  gave  his  name  to  one-half  the  North 
American  continent,  which  till  our  own  day  was  known  as  Prince 
Rupert's  Land. 

Rumors  of  this  invasion  by  the  English  of  a  territory  which 
the  French  claimed  as  their  own,  by  virtue  of  its  having  been  in- 
cluded in  the  sweeping  concession  given  by  Richelieu  to  the  Com- 
pany of  the  One  Hundred  Associates,  having  reached  the  Intend- 
ant.  Talon,  he  comjnitted  to  the  Jesuit  missionaries  the  task  of 
watching  the  English.  These  he  could,  without  reserve,  rely  upon 
to  aid  in  frustrating  the  schemes  of  the  heretics.  To  this  com- 
mission we  owe  one  of  the  most  interesting  narratives  of  the 
Relations — that  describing  Father  Albanel's  journey  to  Hudson 
Bay      Starting  from  Tadousac  in  August,  1671,  with  two  French 


ENGLISH  TRADING  IN  HUDSON  BAY.  517 

and  Indian  guides,  he  passed  the  winter  on  Lake  St.  John.  As 
soon  as  Spring  unlocked  the  icebound  rivers  he  proceeded,  ac- 
companied only  by  Indians,  on  his  journey  by  way  of  Lake  Mis- 
tassini  to  Hudson  Bay,  which  he  reached  in  the  end  of  May,  con- 
vincing himself  of  the  presence  of  the  English  by  seeing  two  of 
their  deserted  huts,  and  also  a  boat  flying  the  English  flag. 

As  usual,  the  Jesuit  acted  as  a  political  agent,  and  at  a  great 
pow-wow  held  on  the  Height  of  Land  urged  the  Indians  to  stop 
trading  with  the  English  in  the  north,  using  as  an  argument  that 
they  did  not  pray  to  God.*  He  begged  them  to  turn  their  steps  back 
to  Lake  St.  John,  where  they  would  always  find  a  l)lack-robed 
priest  ready  to  teach  and  to  baptize  them.  Although  Father 
Albanel  claimed  that  he  always  found  the  savages  very  easily 
moved  by  descriptions  of  hell's  horror  and  heaven's  delight,  he 
admits  that  the  argument  which  appealed  most  forcibly  to  his  sav- 
age hearers  was  the  relief  from  Iroquois  raids  which  they  owed  to 
the  assistance  of  the  French ;  for  even  in  that  distant  region  the 
Iroquois  had  spread  terror.  Dreary  mementoes  of  the  incursions 
of  these  exterminating  savages  were  met  with  almost  to  the  very 
shores  of  Hudson  Bay ;  but  since  the  campaigns  of  Tracy  and 
Courcelle  the  range  of  their  predatory  operations  had  been  cur- 
tailed. 

Father  Albanel's  report  confirmed  the  rumor  of  the  presence 
of  the  English,  and  it  was  clearly  seen  that,  if  they  were  allowed 
to  gain  a  footing  on  the  Hudson  Bay,  Canada  would  be  threatened 
from  both  north  and  south.  Nevertheless  the  Hudson  Bay  Com- 
pany was  allowed  for  ten  years  longer  to  build  and  maintain  trad- 
ing posts — Fort  Rupert,  on  the  southeast  end  of  James  Bay  ;  Moose 
Fort,  on  Hayes  Island,  at  the  mouth  of  Moose  River;  Fort 
Albany,  on  the  Albany  River,  and  a  fort  at  the  discharge  of  the 
Nelson  River.  The  Coinpagnie  dcs  hides,  which  had  replaced 
the  Company  of  the  Hundred  Associates,  looked  on  apathetically, 
while     this     trading    company    was    making   its    position   good, 

*  Unparliamentary  compliments  were  then  paid  with  less  reserve  than  at  pres- 
ent. Charles  II.  took  for  the  Crown  an  interest  in  the  stock  of  the  Tludson  Bay 
Company.  On  presenting  a  dividend  of  225  guineas  on  £t,°o  of  stork  to  William 
the  Third,  the  directors  apologized  for  its  not  being  larger  by  explaining  that  they 
"have  been  the  greatest  sufferers  of  any  company  from  those  common  enemies 
of  all  mankind,  the  French." 


5l8  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

and  preparing  to  defend  itself,  not  only  against  French 
attack,  but  also  against  New  England  poaching  and  illicit 
trade.  When  at  last  France  moved,  it  was  at  the  in- 
stigation of  an  opposition  trading  company — the  Conipag)iic  du 
Nord,  in  which,  as  we  have  already  said,  Quebec  was  deeply 
interested.  Colbert  had  urged  Duchesneau  in  1678  to  take  meas- 
ures to  oust  the  English  from  the  Bay,  but  nothing  was  really 
done,  except  sending  Joliet  to  report  on  their  operations  at  Fort 
Albany.  He  brought  back  the  same  report  of  the  successful 
trade  in  which  they  were  engaged.  It  was  not  till  1681  that  Gros- 
seillier  and  Radisson,  having  obtained  pardon  for  their  treachery, 
were  employed  by  the  Compagnie  du  Nord  to  command  two 
barks,  the  "St.  Pierre"  and  the  "St.  Anne,"  commissioned  to  that 
region.  At  first  they  did  not  venture  to  attack  the  strongest  Eng- 
lish forts,  but  seized  the  post  of  St.  Therese,  near  which  Fort 
Nelson  was  subsequently  built.  What  then  happened  is  not  very 
clear.  According  to  one  account  they  found  young  Gillam,  the  son 
of  Captain  Zachary,  and  Governor  Bridgar  in  charge  of  the  post, 
and  carried  them  captive  in  the  Hudson  Bay  Company's  own  ship 
to  Canada.  The  other  account  is,  that  on  their  way  back  to  Can- 
ada they  fell  in  with  a  Boston  ship,  the  "Gargon,"  a  trespasser  on 
the  Hudson  Bay  fur  preserves,  which  they  took  to  Quebec. 
Whether  it  was  the  Company's  ship  or  a  poacher.  La  Barre,  the 
Governor,  for  reasons  that  are  not  very  clear,  but  to  the  great 
disgust  of  its  captors  and  of  the  colonial  stockholders  of  the 
French  Company,  released  it  and  its  owner,  Benjamin  Gillam. 
This  was  not  the  only  unsatisfactory  experience  of  the  Compagnie 
du  Nord  with  officials.  The  two  ships  returned  laden  with 
peltries,  but  the  agent  of  the  Farmer  of  the  Revenue  ("Societe  de 
la  Ferme  du  Canada"),  Mons.  Chalon,  interfered  to  prevent  the 
Company  transferring  its  furs  at  Isle  Perce  to  another  ship 
for  transportation  and  sale  in  Holland  and  Spain.  De  la  Ches- 
naye,  who  was  the  principal  merchant  of  Quebec,  and  his  partners 
of  the  Compagnie  du  Nord,  protested.  Though  the  Intendant,  de 
Meulles,  did  not  decide  the  question,  he  did  order  the  ships  to  dis- 
charge their  cargoes  in  the  roadstead  of  Quebec.  De  la  Ches- 
naye  proposed  a  compromise,  but  the  question  was  not  settled 


THE    '  COMPAGNIE    DU    NORD."  519 

until  the  following  year.  Nor  did  this  end  the  friction  between 
the  Coiiipagnic  dii  Nord  and  the  Farmer  of  the  Revenue.  The 
feud  existed  at  least  until  1685  ;  for  though  the  Governor  and  In- 
tendant  both  agreed  that  Hudson  Bay  was  beyond  the  jurisdic- 
tion of  the  Farmer  of  the  Revenue,  the  Farmer's  agent  claimed 
that  the  Hudson  Bay  traders  were  diverting  peltries  from  the 
Montreal  market,  where  tolls  could  be  levied  on  them,  to  j^orts  be- 
yond their  supervision,  thereby  depriving  them  of  their  dues. 

More  stirring  events  were  then  transpiring,  and  a  Thirty 
Years'  War  for  the  possession  of  the  Hudson  Bay  had  begun.  It 
would  seem  that  the  partners  had  separated :  Radisson  had  sold 
himself  to  the  English;  his  brother-in-law  remained  true  to  Can- 
ada ;  for  Radisson  in  the  ship  "Happy  Return"  had  surprised,  in 
1684,  his  nephew,  Jean  Baptiste  Grosseilliers,  then  in  the  employ 
of  the  Compagiiie  dn  Nord,  at  a  post  near  the  mouth  of  Hayes 
River.  Besides  capturing  his  relative,  he  impounded  300,000 
francs'  worth  of  furs.  The  loss  of  the  peltries  was  seriously  felt  by 
the  Coiupagnie  dii  Nord.  The  subscribers  and  directors  in  Canada 
of  what  is  called  "The  Hudson  Bay  Company,  established  in  Can- 
ada," held  a  meeting  in  Quebec  on  October  31st,  1684.  After 
expressing  their  regret  that  they  did  not  send  an  agent  in  1683, 
to  plead  for  the  King's  assistance  in  their  efforts  to  destroy  the 
English  trade  in  the  bay  and  conquer  the  lands  around  l""i)rt 
Nelson,  they  resolved  to  send  le  Sieur  de  Conporte  and  le  Sieur 
Pierre  Soumande  to  France,  to  secure  the  King's  permission  to 
despatch  a  canoe  force  overland  to  suprise  the  English  and  frus- 
trate the  schemes  of  the  faithless  Radisson.  The  allowance  made 
to  the  Sieur  Conporte  to  cover  expenses  was  to  be  1,200  livres.  but 
if  he  was  obliged  to  spend  more,  he  was  authorized  to  do  so. 
The  Sieur  Soumande,  who  was  evidently  going  to  France  on  his 
own  business,  was  allowed  his  expenses  from  La  Rochelle  to  Paris 
and  his  expenses  while  detained  in  Paris.  The  mission  was  suc- 
cessful, for  the  Company  received  their  patent  of  incorporation  in 
May,  1685.  and  they  made  reprisals  on  the  other  Hudson  Ray 
Company  with  a  vengeance. 

Governor  La  Barre  was  about  to  retire,  and  one  of  his  last 
acts  was  to  authorize  T^chereau  ]o\\q{,  the  brother  of  Louis,  to 


520  QL'EBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

take  official  possession  of  the  River  Nemiskan  as  a  challenge  to 
the  Hudson  Bay  Company.  Radisson,  guarding  the  English  in- 
terests on  the  Bay,  for])ade  the  French  to  traffic  with  the  Indians. 
The  response  was  the  Chevalier  de  Troyes'  winter  expedition  by 
way  of  the  Ottawa  to  Hudson  Bay.  This  brilliant  exploit  was 
the  forerunner  of  many  others,  in  which  the  heroism  of  Iberv'ille 
and  other  Canadian  leaders  stands  forth  conspicuously. 

The  Canadian  Company  was  reorganized  repeatedly,  and  there 
was  perpetual  confusion  as  to  its  title.  It  was  called  indifferently 
by  various  names.  In  the  original  document  quoted  above  it  is 
called  the  "Compagiiie  de  lo  bayc  d'Hudson,  etablie  en  Canada." 
In  another  original  document  in  my  possession,  dated  1697,  the 
King,  in  a  communication  to  the  shareholders,  addresses  them  as 
adventurers  of  the  "Conipagnie  dii  Canada."  They  reply  as 
shareholders  in  the  "Conipagnie  dn  Nord."  Dr.  William  Doug- 
las, in  his  "Summary,  Historical  and  Political,  of  the  First  Plant- 
ing of  the  British  Settlements  in  North  America,"  published  in 
Boston,  1760,  summarizes  the  tedious  war  in  the  following  brief 
paragraph : 

"In  the  summer,  anno  1686,  in  time  of  peace,  the  French  from 
Canada  became  masters  of  all  our  Hudson's  Bay  factories.  Port 
Nelson  excepted.  Anno  1693  the  English  recovered  their  fac- 
tories, but  the  French  got  possession  of  them  again  soon  after. 
Anno  1696  two  English  men-of-war  retook  them.  In  Queen  Anne's 
war  the  French  from  Canada  were  again  masters  of  these  fac- 
tories;  but  by  the  peace  of  Utrecht,  anno  1713,  the  French  quit- 
claimed them  to  the  English  so  far  south  as  49  D.  N.  lat.  Hitherto 
we  have  not  heard  of  any  attempt  made  upon  them  by  the  Can- 
adians in  this  French  war,  which  commenced  in  the  Spring  1744." 

And  thus  Hudson  Bay  remained  ultimately  in  the  possession  of 
the  British :  but  while  the  struggle  for  its  trade  was  in  progress, 
the  control  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Company  was  a  perpetual  subject 
of  dispute  between  the  French  and  the  Canadian  shareholders. 
The  Rochellois  in  1693  contended  that  they  held  a  majority  of  the 
stock,  and  that  the  trade  should  be  conducted  direct  with  La 
Rochelle,  and  not  through  Quebec,  where  the  merchants  made  60 
per  cent  profit  on  supplies,  and  where  the  Farmers  of  the  State 


fi.1 v-  — 


1  .  ii-v-.  ,<<./-,  j»i_/U  .  -     • 


MS.  Ma])  of  Country  around  Hudson  Bay. 
From  tile  Depot  de  la  .Marine. 


THt:    BEANKR   TRADE. 


521 


levied  heavy  taxes.  Quebec  nevertheless  continued  to  make  its 
gains.  The  Company  cannot  then  have  been  very  prosperous,  for 
it  was  unable  either  to  share  the  expenses  of  Iberville's  expedition 
in  1696,  or  profit  by  his  capture  of  Fort  Bourbon.  Its  influence,  as 
well  as  its  financial  status,  must  have  continued  to  decline,  as  we 
find  that  in  1697  it  was  obliged  to  refuse  to  incur  expenses  in  de- 
fending Fort  Bourbon,  and  in  1700  its  exclusive  privileges  were 
revoked  and  bestowed  upon  the  inhabitants  of  Quebec.  The 
Conipagnie  dc  Castor,  or  dc  la  Colonic  dii  Canada,  was  then 
founded.  The  Coinpagiiic  dii  Canada  was  a  more  popular  and 
purely  Quebec  company  than  its  predecessor.*  Its  constitution 
was  framed  by  Canadians.  Every  trader  in  Canada  was  obliged 
to  take  an  interest  in  it ;  and,  to  secure  a  market  for  its  furs 
the  Farmer  of  the  King's  Revenue,  Mons.  Oudiette,  was  com- 
pelled to  buy  and  sell  in  France  all  the  peltries  the  Company  might 
offer.  Poor  Oudiette  had  paid  350,000  livres  for  the  privilege  of 
being  ruined,  and  the  Company  soon  found  that  the  Farmer  of 
the  Revenue  could  not  pay  for  what  he  bought,  unless  there  was  a 
market  for  the  wares.  The  Company,  therefore,  speedily  follow- 
ed Oudiette  into  bankruptcy.  But  a  certain  enterprising  pro- 
moter, a  ]\Ions.  Aubert,  reorganized  it.  His  panacea  for  securing 
a  market  for  the  Company's  goods  and  preventing  private  trade 
was  to  impose  a  heavy  penalty  on  any  trader  who  should  retain  a 
beaver  skin  in  his  possession  for  over  forty-eight  hours,  and  re- 
fuse to  accept  as  cash  the  Company's  promise  to  pay. 

Beaver  skins  were  declared  legal  tender  at  4  francs  the  pound ; 
the  promises  of  the  Company  were,  of  course,  never  redeemed. 
Promises  and  beaver  skins  became  plentiful,  but  money  scarce.  In 
the  primitive  days  barter  satisfied  the  requirements  of  private  life, 

*  In  the  appendix  to  first  edition  is  a  copy  of  the  contract  between  the  Com- 
pany and  fifteen  coureiirs  de  Iwis  whom  it  was  employing  for  Fort  Bourbon.  They 
were  to  be  paid  three  hundred  francs  a  year,  but  besides  their  wages  they  were- 
to  have  the  right  to  use  caribou  skins  out  of  which  to  make  shirts,  overcoats, 
trousers,  mittens  and  moccasins  for  their  own  use  while  in  the  North;  but  they 
were  not  to  irafficin  furs  on  pain  of  forfeiting  their  wages.  They  were  to  give  a 
year's  notice  before  leaving  the  Company's  service.  If  they  died  their  wages  were 
to  be  paid  to  the  date  of  their  death  to  their  heirs.  If  taken  prisoners,  however, 
their  wages  were  to  be  paid  only  to  the  date  of  their  ca|itivity,  and  no  ransom  was  to 
be  paid  for  their  release.  Three  only  of  the  fifteen  were  able  to  sign  their 
own  names. 


^22  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

but  when  Canada  engaged  in  foreign  trade  and  international  com- 
merce, currency  and  credit  were  required,  and  she  possessed 
neither.  This  need  of  some  currency,  other  than  beaver  and  moose 
skins,  had  been  felt  before  this  date,  for  the  Intendant  ]\Ieulles 
as  far  back  as  1685  reported  to  the  Finance  I\Iinister  that  the  idea 
had  occurred  to  him  of  putting  into  forcible  circulation  notes  of 
various  denominations,  made  by  cutting  playing  cards  into  quart- 
ers, and  stampmg  each  with  the  fleur-de-lis  and  a  crown.  The 
cards  were  signed  by  the  Governor,  the  Intendant  and  the  Clerk 
of  the  Treasury  of  Quebec.  They  were  convertible  into  bills  of 
exchange.  The  next  move  was  to  issue  a  card  in  France  payable 
to  the  bearer  on  demand ;  and  the  example  was  followed  by  a 
colonial  issue,  to  be  confined  to  the  colony.  As  all  were  received 
by  the  Treasurer  in  Quebec  in  payment  for  bills  of  exchange  on 
the  imperial  treasury,  so  long  as  the  bills  were  paid,  the  cards  were 
popular  and  circulated  as  currency  in  domestic  trade.  But  when 
the  French  treasury  was  emptied  by  the  costly  wars  and  ex- 
travagant expenditures  of  the  Court  of  Louis  XIV.,  and  the  treas- 
ury IdIIIs  came  back  to  the  colony  protested,  card  money  was.  of 
cotirse,  discredited,  and  fell  rapidly  below^  its  face  value.  Never- 
theless, it  continued  to  be  issued,  for,  according  to  Parkman,  in 
1714  there  were  2,000,000  francs  of  card  money  in  the  hands  of 
the  20,000  inhabitants  of  Canada,  while  1,000,000  of  good  money 
was  ample  for  the  needs  of  trade.* 

Beaver  skins  continued  to  be  the  most  valuable  and  profitable 
article  of  trade,  but  their  value  declined  with  their  consumption. 
Fashion  changed,  and  hats  v.dth  lower  crowns  and  smaller  brims 
diminished  the  trade  long  before  silk  and  rabbit  fur  actually 
displaced  the  beaver.  Quebec  exported  in  1788  130,758  beaver 
skins  and  200,358  bushels  of  wheat.  But  the  trade  in  furs  declined 
as  the  export  of  wheat  increased.  ^Mackenzie  reported  that  in  1708 
only  106.000  skins  entered  the  market,  and  that  13,364  of  the  best 

*  As  compensation  for  the  refusal  of  civil  rights  and  urgent  restrictions  of 
trade,  the  people  had  enjoved  the  great  advantage  of  freedom  from  direct  taxation 
and  the  advantage  of  merely  nominal  duties  on  exports.  Ten  per  cent  was  levied 
on  wines  and  tobacco,  and  one-fourth  of  the  V^eaver  skins  and  one-tenth  of  the 
moose  skins  were  collected  as  a  direct  tax  on  the  mercantile  classes. 


COLONIZATION  COMPANIES,  PAST  AND  PRESENT.  523 

of  these  found  their  way  to  the  United  States.  The  Hudson  Bay 
Company's  returns  in  1891  account  for  only  460  beaver.* 

The  beaver  trade  of  France  was  disadvantageously  affected  by 
the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes.  Many  of  the  Huguenots, 
who  were  hat  makers,  carried  their  skill  to  other  lands,  especially 
England,  which  drew  its  supply  of  beaver  skins  partly  from  the 
Iroquois  through  the  Hudson,  and  partly  from  Canadian  traders, 
who  smuggled  their  goods  across  the  New  York  and  New  Eng- 
land frontiers.  Lahontan  tells  in  his  own  witty  way  how  the 
trade  was  conducted  in  his  time,  and  how  Mons.  Perrot,  the  Gov- 
ernor, though  receiving  a  salary  of  only  i.ooo  ecus  a  year,  man- 
aged in  a  very  few  years,  through  an  illicit  use,  presumably,  of 
his  official  influence,  to  make  a  fortune  of  60,000  ecus  out  of  furs. 
As  a  consequence  of  restriction  French  trade  was  so  heavily 
handicapped,  as  Charlevoix  tells  us,  that  after  de  Troyes'  suc- 
cessful raid  on  the  English  post  in  the  Hudson  Bay.  the  two 
governments  of  England  and  France  agreed  that  l"\)rt  Nelson 
should  be  a  neutral  trading  post — a  scheme  which  Denonville 
very  sensibly  opposed,  mainly  on  the  ground  that,  as  the  English 
merchants  always  paid  more  for  furs  than  the  French,  they  would 
monopolize  the  trade. f 

Dismal  as  had  been  the  failure  of  the  colonization  companies, 
France  was  not  yet  convinced  of  the  futility  of  advancing  coloni- 

*  Wolley  in  his  Two  Years'  Journal  in  New  York,  published  in  1701,  gives 
as  the  price  of  beaver  skins  los.  3d.  a  pound. 

t  Alexander  Henry,  in  his  Travels  and  Adventures,  says:  "  Under  the  French 
Government  of  Canada  the  fur  trader  of  Canada  was  .subjected  to  a  variety  of 
regulations,  established  and  enforced  by  royal  authority,  and  in  1765,  the  period 
at  which  I  began  to  prosecute  it  anew,  some  remains  of  the  ancient  system  were 
still  preserved.  No  person  could  go  into  the  countries  lying  northwest  of  Detroit 
unless  furnished  with  a  license,  and  the  exclusive  trade  of  a  particular  district 
was  capable  of  being  enjoyed  in  virtue  of  a  grant  from  military  commanders. 
The  exclusive  trade  of  Lake  Superior  was  given  to  myself  by  the  commandant  of 
Fort  Michillimackinac,  and  to  prosecute  it  I  purchased  goods  which  I  found  at 
his  post  at  twelve  months'  credit.  My  stock  was  the  freight  of  four  canoes,  and  I 
took  it  at  the  price  of  10,000  pounds  weight  of  good  and  merchantable  beaver.  It 
is  in  beaver  that  accounts  are  kept  at  Michillimackinac,  but  in  default  of  this 
article,  other  furs  and  skins  are  acceptable  in  payment,  being  first  reduced  into 
their  value  in  beaver.  Beaver  was  at  this  time  at  the  price  of  2  shillings  6  pence 
per  pound,  Michillimackinac  currency;  other  skins  at  6  shillings  each  ;  martin  at  T 
shilling  6  pence,  and  others  in  proportion.  To  carry  the  goods  to  my  wintering 
place  on  Lake  .Superior  I  engaged  twelve  men  at  250  livres  of  the  same  currency 
each,  that  is,  100  pounds  weight  of  beaver  skins.  For  provisions  I  purchased  50 
barrels  of  maize  at  10  pounds  of  beaver  per  barrel." 


524  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

zation  through  the  machinery  of  commercial  monopohes.  She  tried 
it  again  with  Hke  ill  success  in  the  Mississippi  Company  of  1717. 
Strange  to  say,  after  a  long  period  of  vicissitudes,  the 
system  has  been  revived  in  our  own  day  by  all  the  great  and  some 
of  the  smaller  powers  of  Europe,  with  consequences  which  bear, 
under  widely  different  conditions,  some  resemblance  to  the  com- 
plications which  arose  in  New  France.  Not  a  few  of  the  forays 
on  the  borders  of  New  France  and  New  England  would  no 
more  have  been  conceived  and  carried  out  by  consent  of  the  cen- 
tral government,  than  the  Jameson  Raid  would  have  been  planned 
and  committed  by  Great  Britain,  had  the  territory  north  of  the 
Transvaal  been  a  crown  colony  instead  of  a  chartered  one.* 

In  comparing  the  policies  pursued  by  the  parent  States, 
France  and  England,  towards  their  respective  colonies  in  North 
America,  the  virtue  of  greater  consistency  at  least  must  be  allow- 
ed to  France.  If  France  lost  her  colonies  by  the  fortune  of  war, 
England  lost  her's  in  a  manner  less  creditable  to  her  statesmanship 
— by  revolt. 

From  first  to  last,  in  the  creation  and  management  of  the  Eng- 
lish colonies,  the  people  took  the  initiative ;  the  home  government 
did  little  else  than  introduce  the  element  of  confusion.  Through- 
out the  whole  colonial  period  we  can  recognize  suspicion  between 
the  mother  country  and  her  colonies,  and  the  vacillating  policy  of 
the  former.  We  see  charters  granted  and  repealed ;  proprietary 
titles  conferred  and  then  cancelled  and  recreated.  On  the  part  of 
the  colonists  there  was  selfish  reluctance  to  co-operate  for  mutual 
defence  and  refusal  to  allow  the  mother  country  even  to  introduce 
unity  into  the  military  system.  On  the  other  hand.  Parliament 
passed  unjust  navigation  laws  intended  to  benefit  England's 
interests  at  the  expense  of  her  dependencies — laws  which 
encouraged    smuggling    and    piracy    and    every    form    of    illicit 

*  A  commercial  company  may  be  an  apt  colonizer  when  the  article  of  com- 
merce it  exploits  can  only  be  produced  by  encouraging  colonization;  but  in  Canada 
furs  were  substantially  the  only  article  of  export,  and  the  wild  animals  yielding 
them  had  been  exterminated  in  proportion  as  colonization  had  progressed.  The 
development  of  Manitoba  and  the  Great  Northwest  as  an  agricultural  region  was 
with  reason  retarded  bv  the  Hudson  Bay  and  the  Northwest  Companies,  a'^  is 
proved  by  the  rapidity  with  which  the  l>uffalo  and  fur-bearing  animals  of  the  Plains 
and  of  the  Rocky  Mountauis  have  disappeared  before  the  advance  of  agriculture 
and  settlement. 


FRENCH  AND  ENGLISH  COLONIAL  SYSTEMS.  525  ' 

trade  in  colonial  ports,  and  provided  no  inachincrv  for  their  own 
enforcement,  or  penalties  for  their  violation.  England's  naviga- 
tion laws,  in  fact,  operated  rather  as  irritants  than  as  measures  of 
oppression  to  the  colonies.  At  the  base  of  England's  colonial 
policy  was  the  honest  intention  to  form  self-governing  communi- 
ties, which  would  carry  with  them  across  the  seas  English  laws 
and  customs,  as  opposed  to  Spanish  officialism  and  French  ahso- 
lutisHL*  As  time  advanced  and  complications  multiplied,  the  ne- 
cessity became  apparent  of  some  organic  tie  which  would  cause  the 
units  to  coalesce  for  mutual  defence  against  the  foreign  foe,  and 
harmonize  internal  interests  and  dititerences.  England  thought 
that  her  Parliament,  which  had  been  the  safeguard  of  English 
liberty,  should  be  trusted  by  Englishmen  everywdiere  to  legislate 
on  matters  afifecting  the  common  good  and  common  safety.  The 
English  Kings,  with  less  reason,  thought  that  as  representing  the 
nation,  they  might  at  times  exert  their  authority  in  matters  of 
colonial  administration.  But  the  colonists  w-ould  su1)mit  neither 
to  Parliament  nor  to  King,  Schemes  of  federation  such 
as  those  proposed  by  Penn,  and  mter  by  Franklin,  met  with  the 
hearty  approval  neither  of  England  nor  of  her  dependencies.  The 
danger  was  not  great  enough  to  induce  the  colonists  to  forget 
their  hereditary  jealousies,  and  abandon  their  selfish  and  narrow 
views ;  and  England  looked  askance  at  any  scheme  for  a  Colonial 
Parliament,  lest  sooner  or  later  such  a  body  should  arrogate  func- 
tions belonging  to  the  Imperial  Parliament  alone.  The  opposi- 
tion at  present  against  an  Irish  Parliament  is  doubtless  inspired 
by  a  similar  apprehension. f 

*  The  charter  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Company  descrilies  the  inhospitable  lands 
ceded  to  that  company  in  free  and  common  socage  as  one  of  the  Plantations  or 
Colonies  in  America. 

t  Pownall,  in  his  Colonial  Administration,  while  recognizing  the  good  cause 
for  growing  discontent  among  the  American  colonists,  and  advocating  a  vague 
scheme  of  imperial  federation,  warns  Great  Britain  against  the  danger  of  further- 
ing any  movement  looking  towards  consolidation  of  the  colonies  themselves; 
while  now  the  first  step  towards  imperial  safety  is  recognized  to  be  the  con- 
solidation of  the  various  colonial  grouj^s  as  a  step  towards  their  incorjioration  into 
an  imperial  federation,  whose  constitution  shall  unite  the  divergent  fiscal  and 
economical  interests  of  the  different  parts  of  the  British  Empire,  and  solve  the 
ever  recurring  problem  of  how  to  impose  an  imperial  tax  for  imperial  purposes, 
without  violating  the  principle  that  the  taxpayer  alone  can  tax  himself.  This  is 
a  principle,  strange  to  say,  departed  from  only  in  the  Territories  of  the  United 
States,  where  delegates  may  sit  in  the  Federal  Legislature,  but  net  vote,  and 
where  American  citizens  may  not  cast  a  vote  for  President. 


526  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY. 

Frencli  statesmen  must  have  seen,  in  the  English  haphazard 
colonial  policy,  and  in  the  jealousy  prevailing  in  her  colonial  fam- 
ily and  their  suspicion  of  the  parent  State,  the  only  safety  of  their 
North  American  dependencies.  For  a  United  Britain  would, 
with  the  aid  of  the  Iroquois,  or  even  without  their  aid,  have  ren- 
dered the  valley  of  the  St.  Lawrence  untenahle  by  France.  But 
if  the  same  statesmen  flattered  themselves  that  a  merely  consistent 
policy  necessarily  gave  strength  to  the  system  to  which  it  was 
applied,  events  were  soon  to  arise  of  a  nature  to  disabuse  them. 

One  respect  in  which  the  French  colonial  system  differed  es- 
sentially from  the  English  was  in  giving  the  Church  almost  co- 
ordinate powers  with  the  State.  The  position  assigned  to  the 
Superior  of  the  Jesuits  in  the  preliminary  council  of  1647.  and  to 
the  Bishop  or  his  coadjutor,  in  the  Supreme  Council  of  1663 ;  the 
charter  granted  to  a  professedly  religious  community  like  that  of 
Ville  Alarie,  carrying  the  right  of  nominating  its  own  governor; 
and  the  permission  accorded  to  a  religious  body  like  the  Sulpi- 
cians,  to  exercise  seignorial  control,  with  haute,  uioyenne  and 
basse  justice,  over  what  shortly  became  the  most  im- 
portant defensive  position,  from  a  military  point  of  view,  on  the 
St.  Lawrence,  are  anomalies  such  as  cannot  be  laid  at  the  door 
of  English  policy.  Had  the  English  government  attempted  to 
force  a  system  of  this  nature  on  English  colonists,  the  attempt 
would  not  have  succeeded.  Had  the  French  system  been'obnox- 
ious  to  tJie  majority  of  the  French  colonists,  and  opposed  to  their 
national  habits  of  thought,  it  would  have  been  resisted.  There 
was  no  resistance  ;  and,  as  a  consequence,  a  colonial  system  of  dual 
government  by  Church  and  State  was  called  into  existence,  with 
far-reaching  results. 

Looking  backward,  we  can  appreciate  better  than  could  his 
contemporaries  the  full  scope  at  once  of  Frontenac's  genius  and  of 
his  colonial  policy.  His  plan  of  throwing  out  a  chain  of  posts 
between  the  St.  Lawrence  and  the  Mississippi,  of  which  Cataraqui 
was  to  be  the  first  link,  was  admirable.  The  adventurous  temper 
of  many  of  the  colonists  who  had  emigrated  to  Canada  was  a 
splendid  qualification  for  men  who  were  to  defend  a  girdle 
of  forts,  make  each  a  center  of  settlement,  and  thus  win  a 
wilderness  to  civilization  and  a  continent  to  France.     The  mother 


CHARTERED  COMPANIES  OF  RECENT  DATE.  527 

country  could  well  have  followed  the  example  of  England,  and 
spared  many  of  her  more  turbulent  children  to  create  a  New 
France  across  the  sea.  Early  in  the  i8th  century  France 
was  beginning  to  seethe  with  the  discontent  which  was  to  cul- 
minate in  the  Revolution.  Had  her  rulers  looked  across  the  chan- 
nel, and  duly  estimated  the  quantity  of  dangerous  explosive  ma- 
terial in  England  for  which  America  was  affording  an  outlet,  they 
would  have  encouraged  emigration,  rather  than  discouraged  it  by 
refusing,  as  they  did,  political  liberty  and  freedom  of  thought  and 
of  creed  to  the  colonists.  A  slight  relaxation  of  political  and  eccle- 
siastical thraldom  would  have  induced  much  larger  numbers  of  the 
more  restless  and  energetic  of  the  French  population  to  migrate 
than  actually  found  their  way  to  the  wSt.  Lawrence.  Once  free, 
and  inspired  by  the  atmosphere  of  the  American  forest,  prairie, 
lake  and  river,  they  would  have  become  an  irresistible  horde  of 
coiirciirs  de  hois,  who  would  have  peopled  the  whole  West  while 
the  English  were  slowly  preparing  to  consolidate  themselves  into 
a  political  confederation  east  of  the  Alleghenies.  As  it  was, 
Frontenac's  plans  not  only  failed,  but  they  weakened  the  de- 
fensive power  of  the  colony  by  scattering  instead  of  concentrating 
its  feeble  forces.  A  copious  stream  of  immigration  was  necessary 
to  their  consummation,  and  that  Canada  never  enjoyed  under  the 
French  regime. 

When  we  consider  the  complete  failure,  from  the  point  of  view 
of  colonization,  of  the  chartered  companies  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, we  may  well  feel  surprised  at  the  revival  by  England  of  tliis 
method  of  national  expansion  in  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth. 
All  the  chartered  companies  of  to-day  are,  however,  understood 
to  be  merely  forerunners  of  Government,  and  speedily  resign  their 
charters  for  a  pecuniary  consideration,  after  giving  the  powers 
creating  them  a  title  to  the  district  exploited.  The  British 
North  Borneo  Company,  founded  in  1881,  gave  place  to  a 
protectorate  in  1888.  The  Royal  Niger  Company  of  1886  sold  its 
rights  and  territory  to  the  British  Government  for  £865,000.  The 
Imperial  British  East  Africa  Company,  created  in  1885,  disposed 
of  its  possessions  to  the  British  Government  in  1894  for  £250,000. 
Cecil  Rhodes'  famous  British  South  Africa  Company  is  still  in 


528  QUEBEC  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

existence,  but  its  powers  as  a  governing  body  have  been  very 
much  crippled  since  the  Jameson  raid  and  the  war  against  Loben- 
gula.  The  German  East  Africa  Company  resigned  its  governing 
functions  in  1890,  and  the  German  New  Guinea  Company  fol- 
lowed its  example  in  1899.  The  British  African  Commercial  Com- 
panies alone  have  undoubtedly  added  to  the  Empire  about  2,000,- 
000  square  miles  of  territory,  whose  value  is  by  some  belittled, 
even  as  the  worth  of  Canada  was  depreciated  by  the  statesmen  of 
France,  as  it  also  was  by  those  of  England  when  they  resigned 
Kirke's  conquest  without  a  murmur.  The  charters  of  the  modern 
companies  differ  in  many  material  respects  from  those  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  but  they  resemble  strangely,  in  their  essential 
features,  those  of  France  in  the  seventeenth  century,  in  so  far  as 
they  are  endowed  with  political  functions  while  organized  as 
money-making  corporations. 


CHAPTER   XXIX. 

A  SequeL 

The  last  half  century  of  French  domination  on  the  St.  Law- 
rence and  the  Lakes  presents  two  very  different  aspects  of  the 
colonial  life  of  New  France.  Administrative  degeneration  at 
headquarters  was  coupled  with  wonderful  activity  by  the  people 
in  so  exploring  the  recesses  of  the  continent  that  they  extended 
the  claims  of  France  to  territory  from  the  Atlantic  almost  to  the 
Pacific. 

Frontenac's  successor,  Louis  Hector  de  Callieres,  was  an  old 
Canadian,  who  before  emigrating  had  been  a  captain  in  the  Regi- 
ment of  Navarre  and  shortly  after  coming  to  Canatla  had  been 
appointed  Governor  of  Montreal.  It  was  while  in  that  position 
that  he  had  helped  to  save  Quebec  from  Sir  William  Phips  by 
hastening  to  Frontenac's  assistance  with  a  detachment  of  troops. 
As  Governor  he  showed  both  vigor  and  statesmanship.  He 
secured  a  cessation  of  hostilities  among  the  Indian  tribes  and,  after 
the  peace  of  Ryswick,  with  the  concurrence  of  Governor  Bella- 
mont,  he  checked  them  in  their  favorite  pastime,  that  of  border 
massacre.  He  used  the  Jesuits  as  political  agents  to  win  waver- 
ing Iroquois  over  to  the  French  side,  and  virtually  protected  his 
country  against  any  future  attacks  from  those  of  the  Iroquois  who 
remained  true  to  the  British  alliance.  He  died  in  office,  and  his 
remains,  which  were  laid  in  the  Church  of  the  Recollets,  now  rest 
in  the  Basilica  of  Quebec. 

His  successor,  the  Marquis  de  Vaudreuil,  left  in  some  respects 
a  less  enviable  record.  He  also  was  a  soldier,  who  came  to 
Canada  in  1687  to  command  a  detachment  of  the  troops  of  the 
marine.  He  also  helped  to  defeat  Phips.  and  on  de  Callieres' 
appointment  as  Governor  General  followed  him  as  Governor  of 
Montreal.  For  the  part  he  took  in  bringing  about  the  treaty  with 
the  Indians  he  received  the  fief  of  \'audreuil,  which  remains  in 
the  possession  of  his  family.     He  had  therefore  the  advantage  of 


530  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

colonial  experience  when  he  took  the  reins  of  office.  But  his  pop- 
ularity with  the  Indians  and  his  thorough  acquaintance  with  their 
habits  of  thought  and  action  created  such  intimate  sympathy  with 
them  that  it  blinded  him  to  the  consequence  of  using  them  as  a 
weapon  in  his  war  with  the  English  colonies. 

Frontenac  had  set  the  bad  example  of  employing  the  Indians 
to  sack  defenceless  settlements.  Such  comparatively  safe  warfare 
was  agreeable  to  his  Indian  allies  and  he  considered  that  its  suc- 
cess would  weaken  the  attachment  of  the  Iroquois  to  the  English, 
by  demonstrating  their  helplessness  when  thus  attacked.  But 
A'audreuil's  long  administration  was  responsible  for  almost  unin- 
terrupted border  raids  which  embittered  more  and  more  the  rela- 
tions between  the  neighboring  colonies.  It  was  a  policy  fraught 
with  danger,  more  especially  when  the  disparity  in  strength  be- 
tween the  two  groups  of  hostile  colonists  was  taken  into  account. 
Still,  it  was  a  policy  which  a  soldier,  who  was  threatened  by  an 
enemy  of  overwhelmingly  greater  strength  and  resources,  may  be 
forgiven  for  adopting.  It  had  been  repudiated  by  his  predecessor, 
who,  though  a  soldier,  had,  as  a  statesman,  clearer  insight  into  the 
future. 

Unfortunately,  therefore,  the  eighteenth  century  opened  dis- 
mally with  these  ignoble  broils  between  New  France  and  New 
England.  The  war  of  the  Spanish  succession  was  the  excuse, 
but  the  exasperation  growing  out  of  Indian  war  tactics  was 
the  real  exciting  cause.  The  Jesuit  missionaries  had  won 
over  many  of  the  Senecas  and  a  few  from  other  Iroquois 
Nations  to  the  Church  and  to  French  allegiance  and  had  set- 
tled them  in  a  colony  at  Caughnawaga  on  the  St.  Lawrence. 
To  retain  their  fidelity,  congenial  work  must  be  given  them. 
Moreover,  no  method  of  warfare  was  as  cheap  as  turning 
loose  those  savages,  with  their  Abenaki  and  Micmac  allies,  on 
defenceless  settlers  along  the  New  England  border.  The  raiding 
parties  were  generally  accompanied  by  Frenchmen.  The  provo- 
cation had  been  great,  for  though  the  Iroquois  had  not  been  com- 
manded by  Englishmen  in  their  descents  upon  the  St.  Lawrence, 
the  Five  Nations  had  been  allies  of  the  English,  and  1500  Iro- 
quois warriors  had  been  enlisted  in  the  land  force  which  should 


VAUDREUILS    ADMINISTRATION    AND    BORDER    WAR.  53 1 

have  cooperated  with  Phips  before  Quebec.  For  sixty  years 
these  marauders  held  in  terror  the  French  settlements,  had  de- 
stroyed the  Huron  Nation,  had  interfered  with  the  fur  trade 
north  of  the  St.  Lawrence  and  the  Lakes,  and  had  invaded  the 
country  of  the  Illinois  and  other  friencPy  tribes  to  the  South  and 
North  of  the  Lakes.  Every  movement  of  these  savages,  even 
if  not  instigated  by  the  English,  was  made  in  their  favor.  But 
whatever  the  justification,  the  reprisals  made  by  the  French  and 
their  Indian  allies  upon  the  border  villages  of  New  England  from 
Maine  to  Connecticut,  intensified  the  hatred  of  the  English  Pur- 
itans against  the  French  Papists,  and  led  the  Bostoiuiais  to  adopt 
as  a  duty,  which  was  undoubtedly  to  their  interest,  the  destruction 
of  the  French  colonies  of  Acadia  and  Canada.  To  accomplish 
this  end  Boston  was  ceaselessly  active.  From  that  restless  hive 
Sir  W.  Phips  attacked  Acadia  as  a  preliminary  move  towards  his 
disastrous  attempt  on  Quebec  in  1690.  In  Boston  Colonel  Church 
organized  the  raid  in  1704,  with  aid  of  native  allies,  against  St. 
Castin's  fort  and  Grand  Pre,  which  was  executed  with  all  the  hor- 
rors of  Indian  savagery.  From  the  Puritan  stronghold  Hilton 
attacked  the  Kennebec  mission  in  the  following  year.  In  1707 
March's  disorderly  attack  was  made  on  Port  Royal,  and  two  years 
later  Vetch  and  Nicholson's  ill-conceived  invasion  of  Canada  by 
colonists  and  Indians,  by  way  of  Lake  Champlain,  came  to  naught. 
In  1710  Port  Royal  was  captured  for  the  third  and  last  time,  and 
never  restored  to  France.  This  accomplished,  another  attack  on 
Quebec  was  planned,  the  honor  of  taking  which  was  to  be  shared 
by  English  and  colonial  troops  and  sailors.  But  Sir  Hovenden 
Walker's  fleet  was  so  disabled  by  storms  in  the  Gulf  that  he  never 
sighted  the  fortress.  This  serious  reverse  quelled  for  a  time  the 
ardour  of  conquest,  but  deepened  on  both  sides  the  spirit  of  bit- 
terness, which  continued  to  find  vent  in  murderous  raids,  chiefly 
on  the  Kennebec  and  in  New  Hampshire.  It  would  be  degrading 
the  word  to  call  these  man-hunting  expeditions  warfare.  Pep- 
perell's  siege  and  reduction  of  Louisbourg  in  1745,  effected  by 
colonial  troops  alone,  was  the  only  glorious  act  of  war  in  this 
long  series  of  barbarous  atrocities.  The  horrors  of  Wells.  Deer- 
field  and  Haverhill  were  thus  revenged,  not  bv  the  New  Testa- 


I 


532  QUEBEC    IN    THE   SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

ment  precept  of  turning  the  cheek  to  the  smiter,  hut  on  true  Old 
Testament  Puritan  principles.  The  animosity  created  by  these 
barbarities  survived  and  acutely  shaped  the  course  of  future 
events.  They  added  a  tincture  of  bitterness  to  the  war  which 
ended  in  the  surrender  of  Canada  to  Britain  in  1760  and  reacted 
on  the  temper  of  the  French  Canadians  till  long  after  the  conquest. 
The  American  Revolution  might  have  terminated  differently  had 
Old  France  retained  as  hostile  a  feeUng  towards  the  English  col- 
onists as  did  her  former  Canadian  subjects.  They  manifested 
their  resentment  for  past  injuries  by  refusing  to  yield  to  the  blan- 
dishments of  the  revolutionary  leaders  and  by  opposing  Mont- 
gomery and  Arnold  when  they  invaded  Canada  in  1775- 1776.  The 
antipathy  at  least  of  the  Church  and  the  more  influential  inhab- 
itants against  the  Bostonnais  was  stronger  than  their  aversion  to 
their  English  conquerors  and  rulers. 

The  Marquis  de  Vaudreuil  ruled  Canada  from  1703  to  1725. 
Though  not  sagacious  enough  to  foresee  the  fatal  consequences 
of  irritating  his  powerful  neighbors,  he  nevertheless  appreciated 
their  inevitable  territorial  expansion,  and  to  check  their  advances 
built  Fort  Niagara,  reestablished  Fort  Michilimackinac,  and 
strengthened  the  fortifications  of  both  Quebec  and  Montreal.  One 
of  his  most  important  domestic  measures  was  his  redivision  of  the 
Colony  into  parishes — strung  along  both  banks  of  the  river,  much 
as  they  exist  today.  He  laid  down  life  and  the  cares  of  office 
at  84  years  of  age,  long  after  he  had  become  unfit  to  perform  his 
duties.  He  had  married  late  in  life  a  Mademoiselle  de  Joubert. 
She  was  not  an  overwise  woman,  but  so  talented  that  she  was 
chosen  in  1708  as  Under  Governess  of  the  Royal  children,  an 
honour  which  the  ladies  of  the  Ursuline  of  Quebec,  where  she  was 
educated,  not  unreasonably  claim  to  share  with  her.  Her  husband 
joined  her  in  France  in  1714,  and  they  returned  to  Canada  in  1716, 
where  till  her  death  she  exercised  no  little  influence  over  him  and 
the  Government  of  the  Colony.  It  is  significant  that  when  Louis 
XIV  died  in  171 5  he  was  yy  years  of  age,  and  his  Governor  of 
New  France  at  that  date  was  74,  and  that  these  two  old  men  were, 
as  they  approached  dotage,  hurrying  New  France  to  its  fate. 

During  the  Governorship  of  de  Callieres  and  de  Vaudreuil 


.,->^- 


— T-] 


^      '"^ 


ll 


GOVERNOR     r.KAUHARNAIS     AND     THE     CTHn^CIT.  5"^^ 

fhe  Intcndants  were  Bochard,  Fran(;ois  de  iieauharnais,  the  Raii- 
dots,  father  and  son,  performing  at  the  same  time  dilterent  func- 
tions of  the  same  office,  and  Begon. 

Begon  had  waited  two  years  for  a  successor.  The  next  ap- 
pointee to  the  office,  M.  Chazel,  was  wrecked  and  lost  with  all  on 
board  the  Chameau ;  the  second  selection,  M.  Dupuy,  relieved 
him  in  1726.  He  accompanied  the  new  Governor,  Charles  de 
Beauharnais.  M.  de  Longueuil,  the  Governor  of  Montreal,  had 
acted  as  administrator  in  the  interval  since  de  Vaureuil's  death. 
It  had  perhaps  been  better  had  de  Vaudreuil  been  retained,  for 
between  the  new  Governor  and  the  Intendant  there  soon  broke 
out  acute  hostilities.  The  quarrel  culminated  over  the  mortal 
remains  of  old  Bishop  Saint  Vallier.  The  cathedral  chapter  had 
decided  to  appoint  M.  Boullard,  the  Cure  of  Quebec,  as  vicar  gen- 
eral. M.  de  Lotbinere,  the  archdeacon,  fearful  that  his  claim 
to  perform  the  funeral  services  would  be  disputed,  made  haste, 
before  the  remains  were  cold,  to  perform  the  last  rites  in  the 
General  Hospital,  where  the  Bishop  had  died.  M.  Dupuy  sided 
with  the  Archdeacon— the  Governor  with  the  Chapter.  These 
unseemly  quarrels,  which  revived  the  animosities  between  Church 
and  State,  of  Frontenac's  administration,  scandalized  all  pious 
citizens  and  encouraged  the  spirit  of  freedom,  or  of  revolt,  as 
some  might  consider  it,  which  was  beginning  to  replace  the  old 
temper  of  abject  submission.  The  battle  did  not  cease,  even 
with  the  withdrawal  of  Dupuy,  for  his  act  in  appointing  in  his 
place  Pere  Dupuy  was  disallowed,  and  M.  d'Aigremont  was  nom- 
inated. He,  dying  almost  immediately,  was  succeeded  by  M. 
Hocquart,  the  only  Intendant  worthy  of  comparison  with  Talon. 
Still  the  quarrel  with  the  Church  continued,  but  now  Governor 
Beauharnais  combined  with  Intendant  Hocquart  in  contesting 
with  the  coadjutor,  Bishop  Dosquet,  the  appointment  of  a  suc- 
cessor to  the  General  Hospital  of  Montreal. 

The  fear  of  the  English  and  the  Iroquois  was  the   incent- 

/e  to  the  building  of  more  forts  and  the  taking  of  other  precau- 

f'onary  measures.    Nevertheless  while  French  agents  and  French 

kiissionaries  were  busy  placating  the  Indian  tribes  on  the  Lakes 

t>".id  those  on  the  Mississippi  from  its  headquarters  to  its  moutli, 


534  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

bribes  to  informers  and  threats  of  severe  punishment  failed  to 
check  the  growing  trade  between  the  St.  Lawrence  and  the  Hud- 
son, where  Enghsh  goods  for  exchange  with  the  Indians  were  sold 
at  half  the  price  demanded  for  them  on  the  St.  Lawrence. 

Under  Hocquart  further  industrial  progress  was  made.  Ship 
building  so  advanced  that  in  1733  ten  small  vessels  were  built  in 
Quebec ;  in  the  same  year  the  first  road  for  wheeled  vehicles  was 
opened  between  Quebec  and  Montreal ;  and  in  1737  the  first  fur- 
nace was  lighted  at  the  St.  Maurice  iron  mines.  Turpentine  and 
tar,  as  well  as  lumber,  were  exported ;  but  the  most  lucrative  trade 
was  in  the  dried  root  of  the  ginseng,  a  plant  of  the  genus  Aralia 
(Panax),  a  favorite  remedy  in  China,  which  Pere  Lafitau  dis- 
covered in  Canada  in  1720.  It  once  rose  in  value  to  80  francs  a 
pound. 

Hocquart  took  a  great  interest  in  education,  and  introduced 
the  Christian  Brothers  as  teachers  of  elementary  schools.  He 
deplored  the  preference  of  all  classes  of  the  colonists  for  amuse- 
ment and  for  active  over  intellectual  pursuits. 

Still  the  colony  seemed  under  a  blight.  Its  population  in 
1739  amounted  to  only  42,701,  of  whom  4603  lived  in  Quebec 
and  its  banlieue,  and  4210  in  Montreal. 

In  1744  the  Governor  was  warned  that  the  twenty-five  year 
peace  between  England  and  France  (which,  however,  had  not 
been  strictly  observed  in  America)  was  broken  by  a  declaration 
of  war.  Henceforth  the  whole  energies  of  the  colony  must  be 
devoted  to  preparing  for  the  inevitable,  whatever  that  might  be ! 

De  Jonquiere,  Beauharnois'  successor,  began  his  career  by 
a  disaster  off  Sable  Island  to  the  fleet,  with  which  he  was  to  re- 
cover Port  Royal  on  his  way  to  Quebec.  He  returned  to  France, 
leaving  Beauharnois  in  office  against  his  will.  Jonquiere's  mis- 
fortune was  compensated  for  by  a  brilliant  night  attack  on  an 
English  detachment  at  Grand  Pre  by  Canadians  who  had  expected 
to  cooperate  with  Jonquiere  and  d'Anville.  In  such  guerilla  war- 
fare, especially  when  conducted  on  snowshoes,  the  Canadians  ex- 
celled. 

De  Jonquiere  was  again  put  in  command  of  a  fleet,  and  he 
was  ordered  on  his  way  to  Canada  to  cooperate  in  the  capture 


ADMINISTRATIONS  OF  DE  JONQUIERE  AND  DUQUESNE.  535 

of  the  English  colonies ;  but  his  fleet  was  sunk  or  scattered  by 
Anson  and  Warren,  and  Jonquiere  was  made  prisoner.  Thus  as- 
sistance for  Canada  had  been  twice  intercepted,  and  the  Colony 
was  thrown  on  her  own  scanty  resources. 

As  the  Marquis  de  Jonquiere  was  a  prisoner  in  England,  the 
Comte  de  la  Galissoniere  was  appointed  Governor  in  his  stead. 
He  landed  in  Quebec  in  September,  1749.  His  administration 
of  two  years  was  distinguished  not  only  by  the  abundance  of  ad- 
vice he  gave  as  to  the  policy  which  should  be  pursued  by  the 
mother  country,  but  by  the  first  attempt  to  define  the  boundary 
between  New  France  and  New  England.  The  advice  was  as 
fruitless  of  practical  results  as  his  decision  that  the  Alleghanies 
should  separate  the  two  colonies. 

The  terms  of  peace,  which  released  de  Jonquiere,  restored 
Louisbourg  to  France.  As  it  had  been  reduced  by  the  unaided 
efforts  of  New  England,  great  was  her  indignation  at  its  loss. 
Thus  influences  of  many  kinds  were  at  work,  fraught  with  mo- 
mentous consequences. 

De  Jonquiere's  administration  lasted  till  1752,  He  was  ac- 
cused of  nepotism  and  of  using  his  position  for  personal  gain. 
As  the  infamous  Bigot  had  succeeded  the  illustrious  Hocquart 
as  Intendant  in  1748,  he  was  in  office  when  de  Jonquiere  followed 
de  la  Galissoniere,  and  therefore  the  Governor  should  have  been 
scrupulous  to  avoid  every  appearance  of  evil.  His  unpopularity 
is  said  to  have  hastened  his  death,  which  occurred  in  May,  1752, 
after  he  had,  through  ill  health,  resigned  the  active  management 
of  affairs  into  the  hands  of  Charles  Le  Moine,  Second  Baron  of 
Longueuil,  who  had  been  Governor  of  Montreal  since  1749.  De 
Longueuil  acted  as  Governor  General  till  replaced  by  the  Marquis 
Duquesne  de  Menneville. 

Duquesne's  name  suggests  the  most  conspicuous  service  he 
performed — that  not  only  of  asserting  the  ownership  of  France 
to  all  the  country  west  of  the  Alleghanies,  but  of  supporting  his 
pretensions  by  force  of  arms.  The  site  of  Fort  Duquesne,  which 
bore  his  name,  at  the  junction  of  the  Allegheny  and  the  Monon- 
gahela,  where  Pittsburgh  now  stands,  was  well  chosen,  and  it 
will  be  always  memorable  bv  the  defeat  of  General  Braddock  and 


536  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

Colonel  George  Washington,  in  their  attempt  to  drive  the  French 
from  this  crucial  position  in  1755.  But  by  this  time  Pierre  Fran- 
cois Marquis  de  Vaudreuil-Cavagnal  had  displaced  Duquesne. 
Him  the  people  hailed  as  their  savior,  because  he  was  the  son 
of  his  father  and  a  native  of  Canada,  having  been  born  at  Quebec 
November  22,  1698.  He  was  the  last  French  Governor  of  Can- 
ada, and  was  doomed  to  see  Quebec  fall  before  the  same  enemy 
which  had  accepted  its  surrender  from  the  first  Governor.  He 
was  himself  an  honest  and  a  brave  man ;  yet  was  blind  to  the 
villainy  of  his  civil  colleagues  and  jealous  of  the  genius  of  his 
military  assistant,  iMontcalm. 

But  France  lost  Canada  because  she  did  not  appreciate  the 
supreme  importance  of  sea  power.  She  had  not  learned  from  the 
destruction  of  Roquemont's  fleet  by  Kirk  ;  from  many  a  sea  fight 
in  the  interval,  or  from  de  Jonquiere's  defeat  by  Anson,  that  sea 
power  is  the  only  safeguard  of  a  colonial  empire.  The  risk  from 
Canada's  isolation  could  have  been  relieved  only  by  a  fleet;  and 
half  a  century  later  it  was  Napoleon's  impotence  at  sea  which 
compelled  him  to  voluntarily  surrender  or  sell  Louisiana  to  the 
United  States,  lest  it  should  fall  a  prey  to  England. 

But  while  the  neglect  by  the  parent  France  of  her  offspring 
across  the  sea  during  this  period  led  inevitably  to  the  crisis  of 
1759,  the  colonists  themselves  showed  extraordinary  activity  in 
exploring  and  condemning  territory,  which,  had  they  been  able 
to  hold  it,  would  have  made  France  the  sovereign  power  of  the 
New  World.  Prominent  Canadians  recognized  the  invasion  of 
the  Ohio  Valley  by  the  northern  English  Colonies  as  the  natural 
outcome,  unless  checked,  of  their  commercial  activity  in  the  Mo- 
hawk country,  and  of  their  alliance  with  the  Iroquois.  They  also 
watched  with  anxiety  the  progress  of  the  Southern  Colonies 
towards  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi,  the  control  of  which  would 
frustrate  the  consummation  of  the  policy  which  Frontenac, 
through  La  Salle,  had  inaugurated,  of  drawing  a  circle  tightly 
around  his  dangerous  neighbors.  In  a  feeble  way  France  en- 
couraged the  Canadians.  Formerly  she  repressed  the  expansive 
tendencies  of  the  colonists,  because  anxious  to  concentrate  their 
small  numbers  and  scanty  resources.    But  the  Iroquois  were  then 


EXPLORATION    AND   THE   FOUNDING   OF    LOUISIANA.  537 

their  only  aggressive  enemies.  Now  they  were  exposed  to  at- 
tack by  a  far  more  formidable  foe — and  that  from  manv  quarters. 
The  Mississippi  had  been  discovered  before  the  seventeenth 
century  closed;  La  Salle  had  made  his  futile  attempt  to  reach 
its  mouth  by  sea ;  and  he,  Tonti  and  other  adventurers,  had  ex- 
plored the  country  between  Lake  Michigan  and  the  Mississippi 
and  the  Ohio.  La  Salle  had  built  Fort  St.  Louis,  around  which 
the  powerful  nation  of  the  Illinois  had  gathered.  Subsequently 
Detroit  was  founded  as  a  Fort,  and  became  a  prosperous  colony 
of  traders  and  Indians,  whither  the  Pottawatamies,  Ottawas  and 
the  western  renmants  of  the  Huron  nation  resorted  for  traffic. 
Other  attractive  centres  of  trade  were  Michilimackinac  and  Green 
Bay,  where  the  Sacs,  Winnebagoes  and  other  tribes  congregated. 
Yet  the  French  were  not  able  to  monopolize  the  fur  trade  of  the 
vast  territory,  though  they  had  discovered  it  and  were  evangeliz- 
ing it,  for  the  Iroquois,  as  allies  of  England,  had  sent  war  parties 
down  the  Illinois  river  and  held  the  Illinois  in  check,  and  there 
were  Lake  tribes  like  the  Foxes,  who  were  avowedly  hostile  to 
the  Canadians.  Though,  therefore,  Canadian  progress  westward 
was  not  made  without  opposition,  and  though  such  powerful 
tribes  as  the  Sioux  at  first  threatened  the  first  explorers  with  vio- 
lence, the  French  of  every  class,  whether  missionaries,  explorers, 
or  coureurs  de  bois,  exhibited  such  tact  and  adaptability  to  Indian 
habits,  or  some  strange  quality  of  sympathy  and  temper,  which 
the  English  signally  lacked,  that  they  soon  removed  suspicion  and 
disarmed  resistance.  Thanks  to  these  gracious  qualities,  they 
made  friends  of  such  distant  and  ferocious  tribes  as  the  Co- 
manches. 

The  most  important  colonial  work  of  the  home  government 
was  the  founding  of  the  Colony  of  Louisiana,  but  this  was  done 
mainly  by  using  Canadian  material,  and  through  Canadian  energy. 
Nevertheless  the  lessons  of  Canada's  failure  w^ere  unheeded,  for  the 
attempt  to  colonize  the  Mississippi  through  the  agency  of  commei- 
cial  companies  was  repeated,  and  with  the  same  result  as  had 
followed  on  the  St.  Lawrence.  Beside  assisting  in  founding  the 
Colony  of  Louisiana,  Canadians  mapped  the  Mississippi  to  Lake 
Pepin ;  traced  the  Missouri  almost  to  its  source ;  ascended  the  Red 


538  QUEBEC    IX    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

river  to  the  Arkansas ;  entered  New  Mexico  through  Kansas  and 
Colorado,  and  explored  the  Canadian  and  United  States  North- 
west to  the  base  of  the  Rocky  Mountains.  Verendrye  nearly 
deprived  Lewis  and  Clark  of  the  glory  of  their  great  transcon- 
tinental discoveries.  Everywhere  we  find  traces  in  the  nomencla- 
ture of  the  West  of  these  intrepid  explorers,  and  of  the  Canadian 
trappers  who  followed  them,  though  in  the  transformation  which 
words  undergo,  it  will  soon  be  difficult  to  trace  the  originals.  One 
of  the  branches  of  the  Arkansas,  in  Colorado,  was  named  the 
Purgatoire — no  doubt  with  good  reason.  Today  the  name  is 
transformed  into  the  Picketwire.  These  hardy  travellers  not  only 
explored,  but  built  forts,  and  claimed  this  vast  domain  for  the 
crown  of  France  by  as  good  a  title  as  that  by  which  any  part  of  the 
continent  was  held.  A  circle  of  some  twenty  fortified  posts  was 
drawn  around  the  thirteen  colonies  from  Louisbourg  to  New  Or- 
leans ;  but  forts  without  adequate  garrisons  availed  little  against 
England  and  especially  against  her  colonists,  once  the  inertia  of 
their  constitution-making  habits  had  been  fairly  overcome,  and 
they  began  their  irresistible  movement  westward.  For  nearly  a 
century  and  a  half  the  English  had  been  content  to  remain  con- 
fined between  the  sea  and  the  Alleghanies.  Far  from  being  idle, 
they  had  been  busy  experimenting  on  systems  of  self-government, 
and  Church  organization,  and  in  building  up  a  foreign  commerce. 
And  therefore  Canadians  began  to  fear  lest  communities  which 
claimed  and  had  asserted  successfully  the  right  to  govern  them- 
selves, once  they  discovered  that  the  Ohio  Valley  was  a  richer 
country  by  far  than  their  bleak  and  barren  seaboard,  would  ask 
no  man's  leave  to  overstep  the  mountain  barrier  which  separated 
them  from  it.  They  numbered  about  three  million  souls.  Beyond 
the  mountains  they  were  met  by  forts  and  a  population  of  less  than 
50,000,  scattered  in  small  groups  along  3500  miles  of  river  and 
lake  from  Cape  Breton  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  What  resulted 
from  this  collision  of  unequal  forces  we  all  know ! 

The  fall  of  Quebec  was  one  of  the  pivotal  facts  in  American 
as  well  as  European  history.  It  and  the  subsequent  surrender 
of  the  whole  of  French  Canada  were  the  fulfilment  of  the  policy 
and  the  consummation  of  attempt  after  attempt  by  the  English 


THE   SEVEN    YEARS     WAR.  539 

colonies  to  drive  the  French  from  the  Valley  of  the  St.  Lawrence. 
Yet  when  Quebec  at  length  fell,  though  the  colonists  had  made 
diversions  on  Lake  Champlain  and  Niagara,  the  conquest  was 
effected  by  British  sailors  and  British  soldiers,  without  co-opera- 
tion of  the  colonists ;  and  therefore  the  colonists  were  not  con- 
sulted as  to  its  future  government.  Had  it  fallen  before  Sir 
William  Phips'  squadron  and  colonial  volunteers  in  1690,  it  would 
probably  have  been  converted  into  a  separate  colony  "  with  all 
the  privileges  of  His  Majesty's  other  colonies  or  Governments 
in  America,"  as  was  decreed  in  1748  from  Whitehall  with  regard 
to  the  recent  acquisition  of  Nova  Scotia.  What  effect  a  New 
England  constitution  would  have  had  upon  Canada  might  have 
depended  upon  the  number  of  New  Englanders  who  would  have 
emigrated  to  the  St.  Lawrence  in  order  to  teach  the  Canadians 
how  to  use  it.  Although  Puritanism  had  undergone  notable  mod- 
ifications in  practice  between  1628  and  1690,  it  would  have  been 
no  more  acceptable  to  the  Church  of  Rome  in  its  later  than  in 
its  earlier  phases.  And  the  social  and  business  habits  of  the 
enterprising  Bostonians  would  have  jarred  on  the  courteous,  easy 
going  merchants  of  Quebec  and  Montreal.  Nevertheless,  had 
New  England  conquered  the  territory  by  force  of  arms,  it  would 
have  conquered  the  people  by  force  of  character;  and  therefore 
fourteen  instead  of  thirteen  colonies  would  have  revolted  in  1776. 
As  events  occurred,  the  English  Atlantic  colonists  entered  the 
Ohio  Valley  after  the  conquest,  but  very  few  were  tempted  to 
settle  on  the  St.  Lawrence;  and  therefore  New  France  remained 
New  France.  But  the  people  of  Old  France,  stimulated  by  the  new 
Republican  ideas  which  had  been  carried  across  the  sea,  and  em- 
boldened by  the  example  of  the  successful  rebellious  colonists, 
became  a  New  France,  re-born  of  the  French  Revolution.  And 
thus  was  restored  in  part  the  balance  between  the  Old  World 
and  the  New.  j 

Pitt  had  been  made  by  a  reluctant  King  his  Prime  Minister 
in  1757,  when  war — the  Seven  Years  War — had  already  broken 
out  all  over  Europe,  and  was  as  usual  transferred  to  America, 
where  the  tide  of  battle  had  set  for  a  time  against  the  English. 
They  had  lost  Fort  William  Henry  on  Lake  Ciiamplain  and  Fort 


540  QUEBEC    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

Oswego  on  Lake  Ontario,  though  Fort  Frontenac  was  by  a  gal- 
lant move  taken  by  Bradstreet,  when  smarting  under  the  defeat 
at  Ticonderoga  of  Abercrombie's  army,  of  which  he  was  a  colonel. 
But  the  tide  turned  in  1758,  when  Louisbourg  fell  before  the  land 
forces  under  Amherst  and  the  naval  forces  under  Admiral  Bos- 
cowan.  The  same  year  Fort  Duquesne,  where  Braddock  had  suf- 
fered defeat  in  1745,  surrendered  to  General  Forbes,  who  re- 
christened  it  Pittsburgh,  after  the  great  war  minister. 

In  1759,  to  Wolfe,  who  had  distinguished  himself  as  a  briga- 
dier-general at  Louisbourg,  was  entrusted  the  reduction  of  Que- 
bec. His  army  consisted  of  8000  men,  and  his  colleague  was 
Admiral  Saunders,  who  commanded  forty-nine  vessels  mounting 
2000  guns  and  carrying  13,000  men.  The  service  of  the  fleet  has 
been  generally  underestimated  in  the  Quebec  campaign ;  but 
Major  Wood  in  his  "  Fight  for  Canada  "  assigns  to  it  its  true 
position  and  importance.  To  divert  the  enemy  Fort  Niagara  was 
attacked  and  taken  by  Johnson  with  a  force  of  regulars  and 
colonial  troops ;  and  General  Amherst  himself  led  a  large  force 
against  Ticonderoga  and  Crown  Point,  where  Abercrombie  had 
been  so  signally  defeated  in  1758  by  Montcalm.  He  took  both 
positions,  but  he  moved  so  slowly  that  he  was  unable  to  co-operate, 
as  planned,  with  Wolfe.  Johnson,  after  taking  Fort  Niagara, 
and  Amherst,  after  clearing  Lake  Champlain  of  the  French,  were 
to  have  combined  forces  and  taken  ^Montreal  and  then  joined 
Wolfe,  but  neither  of  these,  with  his  large  contingent  of  colonists, 
was  able  to  carry  out  his  share  of  the  programme. 

The  siege,  which  lasted  from  June  26th,  when  Admiral  Saun- 
ders' fleet  anchored  off  the  Island  of  Orleans,  until  the  13th  of 
September,  Vvhen  the  struggle  on  the  Plains  of  Abraham  re- 
sulted in  the  defeat  of  ]\Iontcalm  and  the  capitulation  of  the  city 
on  the  18th  of  the  same  month,  was  less  an  investment  than  a 
Juries  of  desultor\-  engagements,  ending  in  a  duel  on  which  Wolfe 
in  despair  staked  his  all,  and  which  Montcalm,  from  a  chivalrous 
sense  of  honour,  elected  to  fight  in  the  open,  rather  than  await 
attack  behind  entrenchments.  The  romantic  characters  of  these 
two  commanders  and  their  tragic  deaths — the  brilliant  and  daring 
move  of  the  young  but  frail  English  general,  and  the  magnificent 


T) 


r 


\ 


THE    FALL    OF    QUEBEC.  54I 

ardor  with  which  the  noble  of  old  France  picked  up  the  gauge  of 
battle — the  beautiful  landscape  around  the  scene  of  conflict,  and 
the  tremendous  issues  which  hung  on  the  result,  have  made  the 
Battle  of  the  Plains,  though  only  io,oocj  men  were  engaged  upon 
both  sides,  one  of  the  great  battles  of  the  world. 

The  series  of  pictures  taken  after  the  siege  by  order  of  Ad- 
miral Saunders,  most  of  which  we  have  reproduced,  show  into 
what  a  heap  of  ruins  the  city  had  been  battered ;  and  therefore 
to  what  deplorable  straits  the  inhabitants  must  have  been  reduced. 
They  were  not  only  houseless  but  famished.  Moreover,  the  flimsy 
fortifications  to  the  west  afforded  less  protection  to  the  city  than 
Townsend's  earthworks,  thrown  up  hastily,  offered  to  his  men. 
As  the  city,  exposed  to  bombardment  by  the  flleet,  by  the  batteries 
at  Point  Levis,  and  by  yet  other  batteries  which  would  be  posted  on 
the  Plains  of  Abraham,  must  inevitably  have  fallen,  Montcalm  was 
probably  wdse  in  preferring  to  risk  a  battle  with  troops,  which 
had  been  with  confidence  anticipating  it,  than  to  expose  them  to 
the  depressing  influence  of  a  siege,  which  must  end  in  the  reduc- 
tion of  the  fortress  before  even  the  approach  of  winter  would 
oblige  the  English  fleet  to  sail  away.  The  fortifications  then  bore 
no  resemblance  to  the  stone  walls,  the  deep  open  trenches  and  the 
esplanades,  culminating  in  the  imposing  citadel — all  of  which  to- 
day present  so  picturesque  a  reproduction  of  a  European  walled 
town.  If  those  of  1759  had  been  really  effective  for  defense  the 
city  would  not  have  surrendered  six  days  after  the  battle.  All 
the  circumstances,  however,  attending  this,  the  last  act  in  the 
drama  of  which  Quebec  had  been  the  scene,  were  an  inevitable 
culmination  of  what  had  gone  before,  and  a  tragical  climax  to  the 
plot  in  which  the  dramatis  pcrsoncu  had  been  Old  France  and  Old 
England,  New  France  and  New  England. 


INDEX. 

Abenalcis,  Algonquin  tribe,  colonists  contemplate  alliance  with,  188;  supply  col- 
onists witli  corn,  190 .  prosperity  of,  192  ;  guide  Knglisli  traveler,  270  ;  in 
council,  2So  ;  accompany  French  envoys  to  New  England,  311  ;  solicit  aid  at 
Quebec,   329. 

Acadia,  religious  dissensions  of  colonists,  74-75  ;  Champlain  in.  7(i-77  ;  advauat.ues 
of,  to  France,  bl  ;  trade  monopoly  of,  granted  to  de  Monts,  82  ;  duties  on  goods 
from,  S2-83  ;  failure  of  de  Monts'  colony  in,  83,  lUG  ;  peaceful  relations  of 
French  and  Indians,  90  ;  De  la  Motbe  in,  128  ;  English  dispute  French  right 
to,  13C  :  invasion  of  Argall,  159  ;  Jesuits  in,  171  ;  conditions  of  treaty  of  St. 
Germain  concerning,  221-222  ;  rights  of  trade  reserved,  280  ;  a  menace  to  New 
England,  300 ;  loss  of,  due  to  Cromwell,  30G,  3G3 ;  impottance  of,  to  Canada, 
383. 

Achilla  /.,  Sultan  of  Turkey,  treaty  with  France  cited.  95. 

Admiralty  Court  established.  506. 

Africa,  modern  occupation  of,  compared  to  early  contest  for  America,  7,  10; 
early  French  coast  trade,  67. 

Agona,  Indian  chief,  38;  welcomes  Cartier,  42;  crowns  Cartier  with  wampum,  43; 
conspires,  45. 

Agriculture,  aboriginal,  at  Quebec,  35,  40-41 ;  French  at  Quebec,  44,  78,  86.  89, 
120-121,  126;  neglected  by  colonists,  130,  163,  169;  farm  established,  177. 
178 ;  checked  by  Iroquois,  276-277.  357  ;  limitations  of  early  farmers,  508- 
509  ;   manner  of  bringing  produce  to  market,  509-510. 

Aiguillon,  Mnrie  dc  Comhallrt  {nee  Vignerod),  Duchess  d',  sketch  of,  257;  land 
given  to  hospital  by,  257,  265,  494  ;  in  Quebec  topography,  332-333  ;  death 
mentioned,  437. 

Ailleboiit,  Mine.  Barbe  d'  (nee  Boulogne),  arrival  at  Quebec,  277;  at  Chateau  St. 
Louis,  301,  400  ;  at  the  Hotel  Dieu,  464. 

AiUebout,  Jjottis  de.  Governor  of  New  France  (1648-1651),  deed  drawn  by,  242; 
arrives  at  Quebec,  277  ;  deputy  to  France,  291  ;  succeeds  Montmagny.  293, 
298,  329  ;  concessions  secured  by.  293-294  ;  memorable  incidents  of  adminis- 
tration. 299;  disinterestedness  of,  299;  negotiates  with  New  England.  3n5, 
310,  339.  340:  succeeds  Charles  de  Lauzon  as  Governor  ud  interim.  346.  347- 
348 ;  settles  claims  of  precedence,  353 ;  death  of,  356 ;  lays  corner-stone 
of  Church  of  Ste.  Anne  de  Beaupre,  421. 

Ajoaste,  Indian  tribe,  village  of,  34. 

Albanel,  Charles,  Jesuit,  left  at  Montreal,  357  ;  journey  to  Hudson's  Bay,  516- 
517. 

Albany,  N.  Y.,  plans  for  reduction  of,  362. 

Albigenses,  mentioned.  114. 

Alexander  vr..  I'ope.  character  of.  11  ;  l)ull  of  demarcation,  14,  68. 

Alexander.  Sir  ^\^illiam.  fits  expedition  against  French,  211  note;  complains  of 
poachers,  215. 

Algonqitins,  meeting  place  of.  51  ;  home  of.  54  ;  origin  of  strife  with  Iroquois,  54- 
55,  59  note:  drive  out  Iroquois,  55;  alliance  with  Champlain,  57.  90-91.  93- 
94,  97;  Champlain  attempts  to  reconcile  with  Iroquois.  162;  excite  fears  of 
colonists,  180;  forego  trade  with  English.  228-229;  opposed  to  white  men, 
2,S2  ;  defend  Three  Rivers,  249-250;  religious  training  of,  249-251,  277.  288; 
guide  French  to  Huron  town.  255 :  participate  in  Quebec  ceremonies,  255- 
256,  263 ;  give  captives  to  French,  283 ;  seek  French  alliance  against  Iroquois 


544  INDEX. 

and  New  Englanrl  colonists.  287-2SS  ;  value  of  alliance  to  French,  206,  303  ; 
Dniillettes  with.  303 ;  seek  refuge  at  Quebec,  369  ;  in  Province  of  Quebec, 
370  note;  fail  de  Courcelles,  433. 

Allard,  Pierre  Germain,  Reolivt,  arrives  at  Quebec,  440. 

"  Alouette,''  ship,   chartered  by  Jesuits,    174;   dispatched  against  pirates.   177. 

Ambrose,  .Jesuit  brother,   brews  beer,  321. 

America,  analogy  between  early  and  present  systems  of  occupation,  7  ;  early  dis- 
coveries and  discoverers,  7-18;  Asiatic  theory,  9;  Cartier's  second  voyage 
closes  first  cycle  of  discovery,  9 ;  importance  of  discoveries  ignored,  10 ; 
European  politics  controlling  force  of,  13,  18. 

Ancre,  Concino  Coneini,    Baron  de  Lussigny,  Marechal  d',  assassination  of,  123. 

Anjoii,  annexed  to  Prance,  15. 

Ann  street,  site  of  .Jesuit  college,  475. 

Anne  of  Austria,  211.  332:  indifferent  to  Canada,  276;  confirms  commercial  con- 
cession, 2S0  ;   favors   I>e  .Toune.  413  ;  supports  J.aval.   333,  417,  431,   435. 

AnneiUla,  Indian  remedy  for  scurvy,  36.  54,  89.     See  also  Balsam. 

Anthoiiic,  Dom,  question  as  to  priesthood  of,  30. 

Antieosti,  Island  of,  passed  by  Cartier,  22;  Cartier  near,  23. 

Appendix,  pp.   529-539. 

Arelter,  Goliriel,  arrival  at  .Jamestown,  157. 

Archives  lie  Pari^.     See  Paris. 

Arqall,  Samuel,  raid  on  Acadia,  76.  77,  91,  128,  159,  187. 

Argcnson,  Pierre  de  Toiler,  vicomte  d',  governor  of  Canada  (1658-1661),  recep- 
tion at  Quebec,  348;  campaign  against  Iroquois,  348-350.  357,  358;  disputes 
Paval's  claim  to  precedence,  353,  423-424,  426;  administration,  3.'"»8-350 ; 
sails  for  France,  360 ;  ordered  to  support  Laval,  419 ;  opposes  Laval  on 
brandy  question,  453. 

Armament,  supplied  by  Louis  XIII.  for  defense  of  Quebec.  151-152,  196-197.  See 
also  Artillery,  Firearms. 

Arnold,  Benedict,  at  Quebec,  499. 

Artilleni,  used  at  religious  celebrations,  117,  249,  263,  317,  322,  324.  See  also 
Armament,  Firearms. 

Artois,  annexed  to  France,  15. 

Aubert,  ,  reorganizes  Compagnie  du  Canada,  521 ;  trading  policy  of,  f)21. 

Auhert,  Francois,  witness,  536. 

Aubert,  Thomas,  explorations  of.  19. 

Auteuil,  Ruette  de,  dismissed  from  council.  429 ;  resists  claims  for  tithes,  448 
note;  director  of  tlie  Compagnie  de  Colonic,  538. 

Avangour,  Pierre  du  Bois,  Baron  d'.  governor  of  Canada  (1661-1663),  succeeds 
D'Argenson.  358:  first  days  in  Quebec.  360;  dispatch  to  Conde.  361-362; 
replaced  by  de  Mezy.  362  ;  impeached  by  Laval,  372,  427  ;  conflict  with  Laval 
on  the  brandy  traffic,  427-428,  453;  confirms  confiscation  of  Quebec  store  of 
Montreal  company.  493. 

Azores,  Islands  of.  point  of  demarcation  in  papal  bull,  14. 

B.  O.  M.   (builders'  old  measure),  25  note. 

Bacon,  Oilles,  discovers  mines,  324. 

Bate  des  Chuleurs,  named  by  Cartier,  22  :  trade  monopoly  granted  to  de  Monts, 
82. 

naie  St.  Paul,  effect  of  earthquake  at,  366  ;  ores  of,  385. 

Baker,  John,  poacher.  216. 

Ballet,  performed  at  wedding,  324  ;  disapproved  by  .Jesuit.?,  402.  See  also  Theat- 
ricals. 

Balsam,  Indian  remedy  for  scurvy.  36-37;  efficacy  of,  46.     See  also  Annedda. 

lialznr,  Honore  de.  theory  on  Rnglish  emigration,  382  note. 

Banee,  Ouillatnnc,  house  burned.  321. 


INDEX.  545 

Baptmnn,  spectacular,  176;  fails  to  cure,  INij;  fatality  of,  250;  administered  to 
captives,  292.  331. 

Uarrtque  (cask,  hogshead),  capacity  of,  ."511  note. 

Barronie,  a  holding  under  feudal  tenure.  80,  237.     See  also  Feudal  system. 

Basques,  early  voyages  to  tishiug  grounds,  10.  fl") ;  combine  to  preserve  fisheries. 
C5  ;  forbidden  to  trade  for  furs,  77-7S  :  poach  on  Pren<-h  reserves.  1t»2. 

Batiscan,  Indian  chief,  welcomes  French,  06;  asked  to  guide  Champlain,  00-lofi. 

Batiscan  River,  described  by  Cbampiain.  72. 

Baurman,  Laurent,  executor  of  first  national  deed,  506  note. 

Baxter,  Richard,  Call  to  the  Uneonverted,  translated  for  Indians,  307  note. 

B'lji  of  St.  Clair,  trade  monopoly  of  granted  to  De  Monts.  82. 

Bayly,  Lewis,  Practise  of  Piety,  translated  for  Indians,  3(t7  note. 

Beam,  France,  church  property  restored.  12.'!. 

Beavchassr,  — ■ — ,  clerk,  warned  of  meditated  massacre,  128;  addresses  IndlanB, 
129. 

Beandry,  ,  Judge,  discovers  ordinance  regulating  tithes,  448,  note. 

Beauharnais, ,  urges  state  aid  for  .lesuit  college.  469-470. 

Beaulieu,  Jacques  Oourdean,  Sleur  de,  murder  of,  368. 

Beauitort,  first  seigneur  of,  ISO  (see  also  Seigneuries)  ;  Nlcolet  at,  252  :  Jesuit 
lands  at.  323-324  ;  Hurons  to  be  established  at.  330 :  religious  services  at, 
330,  413;  census  of  1661,  3.')7  note;  census  of  1666.  370.  413. 

Beauport  Flats,  murders  on,  126.  128.  180-181.  235:  efforts  to  cultivate,  16S;  fate 
of  murderers,  189-190;  settlers  on,  264;  lands  ceded  to  nuns.  318,  323,  324. 

Beaupre,  Vieomte  de,  in  Charge  at  Cap  Rouge.  44. 

Beatipre,  seigneurie  de.  264.  483  (see  also  Seigneuries)  ;  census  of  1661,  357  note; 
census  of  1666,  370.  413  ;  need  of  priests  at,  413. 

Beaver  skins,  price  advanced  by  trade  restrictions,  69.  83  :  duties  on.  82-83  ;  price 
advanced  by  free  trade,  97;  price  in  France,  175;  shipped  to  France,  109, 
175,  281,  316,  287.  324-325,  330;  trading  values,  180,  187,  216;  soldiers  al- 
lowed one  coat  of.  195;  taken  by  Kirke.  195.  197.  213.  214  nntr.  215;  price 
fixed  by  commercial  grant,  208  ;  seized  from  priest.  290,  326  ;  a  welcome  con- 
signment. 30U,  368;  price  fixed  by  Intendant.  383;  value  in  brandy,  458HOfc,- 
legal  tender,  521,  523  note;  decline  in  value.  522;  value  affected  by  revocation 
of  Edict  of  Nantes.  523.     tice  also  Fur  trade. 

Bicancottrt,  Sieiir  de.     See  Robineau. 

Becancourt,  Que.,  Indian  population  of.  370  note. 

Beerham.  Williatn,  Iroquois  Trail  cited,  56. 

Beyon,  Claude  Michel,  Sieur  de  la  Picardirn-e.  escapes  from  fire,  499. 

Beira,  Juan  de,  Jesuit,  result  of  instructions  to,  314  note. 

Belle  Isle,  Straits  of,  early  known  to  navigators,  19,  20;  Cartier's  fleet  In,  24,  42. 

Belmont,  FranCjOis  Vachon  de.  Sulpicinn.  Histnire  de  la  Nnurclle  Frrnne  cited, 
273;  Histoirc  de  Veaii  de  vie  eu  Canada,  attributed  to.  451. 

Benac, ,  member  of  Compagnie  du   Nord,  536. 

Bentivolio,  Ouido,  Papal  nuncio,  empowers  Recollets.  143. 

Bentzon,  Thomas,  Notes  de  Voyaye   cited,  411  note;  514. 

Bernieres,    Oourdaine,  Ursuline,  411. 

Berniires,  Henri  de,  grand  vicar  for  Laval,  .394,  412:  arrives  in  Canada,  408;  at 
Hermitage  of  Caen.  411-412;  tenant  of  Mme.  de  la  Peltrie.  420  note:  claims 
seat  in  council.  437  ;  at  Recollet  ceremony,  442  ;  arrives  at  Quebec  to  conduct 
seminary,   466. 

Bernieres.  Louviyny,  Jean  de,  marriage  to  Mme.  de  la  Peltrie.  259,  411,  420  note ; 
at  Hermitage  of  Caen,  411-412  :  death,  420  note;  Le  Chretien  Interieur  placed 
on  the  Index.  412. 

Bersimis,  Que.,  Indian  population  of.  370  note. 

Berthier,  Alexandre,  Sieur  de,  captain  in  Carignan  regiment,  arrives  In  Canada, 
278  ;  abjuration  of,  404. 


546  INDEX. 

Beizee,  ,  Jesuit,  result  of  instructions  to,  314  note. 

Bcvcr,  Sni'iiicl  Pierce,  poacher,  "Jlfi. 

Bigot,  Francois,  Intendant  of  New  France  (1748-1700),  cited,  291;  character  of, 
499.  oOG. 

Black  rohes.     Sec  Jesuits. 

Bhiir,  James,  mentioned,  462. 

Blundell,  NicnoUi.^,  deposition  as  to  bestowal  of  Quel)ec  colonists,  198. 

Boisseau,  Jean,  courcur  dc  hois,  text  of  contract,  536-538. 

Bonfires,  ligliting  of.  on  St.  Johns  day,  32S. 

Boiif/oiist,  Etientie,  millwright,  322. 

Boniti,  Jacques,  Jesuit,  leaves  Three  Rivers.  300. 

Bonnassiciix,  Pierre,  La  Grande  Comiiagnie  dc  Commerce  cited,  66. 

BoswelVs  Brewery,  sovereign  council  held  at,  500. 

Boston,  Ma.is.,  progress  of,  2G5  ;  Druillettes  at,  300,  308  :  La  Tour  at,  300  and 
note,  30(5-307  ;  passage  of  French  troops  considered.  308  :  fighting  capacity, 
309  ;  traders  favor  French  alliance,  31U ;  d'Avagour's  plan  for  its  reduction. 
362  ;   Radisson  and  des  Gros?ielliers  at,  516. 

Boucher,  Pierre,  people's  envoy  to  France,  363,  511  :  TTistorie  iieritahle  des  moeurs 
et  prodtictioiis  de  la  KouvcUe  France  cited,  511,  512  note,  539. 

Boucherville,  Lahontan   at,  401. 

Boulanijue  {Boulogne).  Philippine  Gertrude  de,  enters  convent,  301. 

Boulard. ,  claims  for  tithes,  448  note. 

BouUc.  Eiistache.  sails  for  Canada  (1618),  128;  meets  Champlain.  140;  at  Que- 
bec, 141  ;  guards  fort,  148:  signs  petition  to  the  liing,  153;  sails  for  Canada 
(1626),  174;  protests  against  war  on  Iroquois,  179;  lal^es  command  of  "  Le 
Coquin,"  190-191 ;  captured  by  Kirke.  194.  195-196.  215  ;  knowledge  of  Com- 
pany De  Caen,   206. 

BouUe,  Heli'.ne.     See  Champlain. 

BoiiUe,    Nicolas,  aids  De  Monts  and  Champlain,  99. 

Bourbon,  Charles,  Due  de.     Sec  Soissons. 

Bourdon,  Jean,  qualifications  of,  253  ;  elected  syndic.  291  ;  brings  horses  to  Can- 
ada. 3S0  :  appeals  to  king.  432  ;  procurer-general,  433. 

Bourgcoim,  Margaret,  character  of,  283  ;  founds  association  of  Les  Filles  de  la 
Congregation.  411  note. 

Bourne,  George,  Picture-''  of  Quebec,  497  note. 

Boutentrein,  ,  house  burned,  351. 

Bouthier,  Guillaume,  summons  Gitton,  531-532. 

BoutonviUe,  -,  represents  Talon,  384. 

Boyer, .  Sieur  de,  Rouen  merchant,  at  Tadousac,  110:  opposed  to  Champl.i.in, 

124,  138. 

Bradford,  William  ("Jean  Brentford"),  Governor  of  Plymouth,  entertains  Druil- 
lettes, 30T. 

Brandy.    See  Liquor  traffic. 

Brazil,  founded  hy  Portugal,  14  ;  Huguenot  colonies,  68,  112  ;  success  of  Francis- 
cans in,  170. 

Bread,  cost  of  (1645),  316. 

Brebeuf.  Jean  de.  Jesuit,  enters  on  Huron  mission.  175-176.  177.  232-233;  for- 
bidden to  accompany  Hurons,  229-230;  at  Three  Rivers,  232;  martyrdom. 
300. 

Bressari,  Francesco  Giuseppe.  Jesuit,  teaches.  282:  accompanies  Hurons,  300; 
brings  news  of  Iroquois  war,  300;  leads  relief  party,  302. 

Brest.  Island  of.  Cartier  at.  22. 

Bretons,  at  Newfoundland.  19,  05;  names  of  resembling  Quebec,  55  note;  oppose 
monopolies.  74.  75.  n.'!.  208.     Sec  o/.so  Brittany. 

Bridgar.  John,  Governor  at  Port  Nelson,  capture  and  release  of,  518. 


Jl 


INDKX. 


S47 


Bridge  strret,  115. 

Urittiiny,  Estates  of,  declare  St.  Lawrence  open  to  Breton  traders,  127  ;  opiiose 
Company  of  Morbilian,  205. 

Brook  St.   Michel   (Kiviere  aiix  IJovres).  ("artier  near,  24. 

Brouafje,  birthplace  of  Champlain,  72;  salt  worlts  of.  2(»7. 

Brule.  Eiiciuie,  restored  by  Iliirons,  100;  witli  Champlain,  119;  cotircur  de  bois, 
131,  1G9  ;  captured  by  Kirke,  195-19G  ;  serve.',  English,  22^  ;  death,  223  note. 

Brvno,  ,  in  the  Compagnie  de  la  Baye  d'Hndson,  532. 

Buadc  street,  241,  495  note;  origin  of  name,  498. 

Bttckinffhaiii,  0<or<ic  Villicis,  Duke  of,  attack  on  Uochelle,  179,  210-211.  211-212; 
death,  212. 

Burgiituhj,  annexed  to  France,  15. 

Butei>ii)s. .  French  sea  cai)tain,  detained  by  ice,  240. 

Butcuw,  Jacques,  Jesuit,  arrives  in  Canada,  232  ;  receives  letter  from  Nagabamat, 
311  812;  killed  by  Iroquois,  33(i. 

Gdbanne  aux  Topiers  River  (Riviere  anx  Topiers,  Chalifour).  .Tcsuit  lands  on, 
318,  324. 

Cabot,  John  and  Sehasiian,  result  of  report  of  northern  discoveries.  15,  19. 

Cabral,  Pedro  .V rarer,  discovers  Brazil,  14. 

Caen,  Emery  de,  Huguenot  naval  captain,  vice-governor  of  Canada,  lfi(i;  cold  re- 
ception of  ,Tesuits  172;  seeks  possession  of  Huron  boy,  17(i:  turbulence  of 
his  Huguenot  crew.  177;  sails  to  join  La  Ralde,  177-178;  intercedes  for  cap- 
tive Indians,  179;  refuses  passage  to  Jesuits,  179;  intercepted  by  Kirke,  195- 
19ti;  attempts  to  relieve  Quebec,  198,  206-207;  captured  by  Kirke.  19,s.  199; 
213,  221;  in  Company  of,  206;  suspected  of  collusion  with  ICIrke.  213-214; 
takes  possession  of  Quebec,  214,  221,  222,  223;  trading  privileges  granted  to, 
218;  reports  details  of  English  occupation,  218-219;  religions  tolerance  of, 
224.     See  also  Commercial  Companies. 

Caen,  Guilluume  de.  Huguenot  merchant,  letters  from.  149;  meets  Champlain.  150; 
proceedings  against  Pontgrave,  150,  151  :  at  Tadonsac,  152,  105;  at  Quebec. 
162.  164;  favors  Huguenots,  162-163;  at  Cap  Tourmcnte,  164;  returns  to 
France,  164;  makes  tour  of  inspection,  100;  territorial  claims  not  confirmed, 
166;  complaint  against,  173;  in  Company  of,  206;  settlement  with  Kirkes, 
215-217;  obligations  under  treaty  of  St.  Germain,  222;  claim  against  Com- 
pany of  Hundred  Associates,  225.     See  also  Commercial  Companies. 

Caen,  Franee,  de  Bernieres  at,  259.     See  also  Hermitage  of  Caen. 
Callieres-Boniievue,  Louis  Hector  de,  place  of   burial,   ^J'.';  proposes  conciuest  of  New 
York,  396;  hastens  to  defend  Quebec.  306;  asks  for  money  to  complete  Chateau 
St.  Louis,  502. 
Calriii,  John,  bigotry  of.  75  ;  dogma  not  attractive  to  savages,  107,  248. 

Canada,  French  feudal  customs  transferred  to,  16-17  (see  also  Feudal  system, 
Seigneuriesl  •  early  explorations  of,  19-50;  dark  ages  of  history  of,  51  ;  lan- 
guage of  al'Originos  of.  52.  53  (see  also  Hurons.  Iroquois)  ;  early  schemes  for 
colonization,  67-08,  69,  70;  Huguenots  excluded  from.  75.  113,  381  :  powers 
granted  La  Roche  in.  79;  population  of  (1628)  108.  (1022)  158,  (1666)  379. 
(1681)  381;  Recollots  in.  116-117,  127:  evolution  from  trading  domain  to 
royal  colony,  141  :  Sully  opposed  to  maintenance  of,  154;  comparative  settle- 
ment of,  157-161,  2f!5,  381-382;  wandering  habits  of  early  colonists,  169;  fur 
trade  the  central  pivot,  174;  municipal  goverinncnt  granted  lo.  281.  288-289 
(see  also  Constitution,  Council)  ;  hahilants  send  deputation  to  France.  291- 
292  ;  seeks  alliance  with  New  England.  303,  304-305  ;  a  crown  colony,  333, 
370;  debt  to  Frontenac,  394;  menaced  by  Iroquois,  395;  raids  on  New  Eng- 
land, 399 ;  bureaucratic  organization,  505-507 :  danger  from  English  In  the 
north,  517;  card  money,  522  (see  also  Currency).     See  also  New  Franco. 


548 


INDEX. 


Canada,  Church  of,  conflict  with  civil  powers,,  412;  choice  of  bishop  of,  413  (see 
aliio  Lavalj  ;  diocesan  claims  of  La  Kochelle  anil  Nantes  over.  413,  415 ; 
claims  of  see  of  Rouen  over,  410,  410  note,  430  (stc-  alao  Queylus)  ;  rights 
secured  by  Quebec  Act,  449.     See  also  Roman  Catholic  Church. 

Canada,  Royal  ^ovielrj  of,  I'locctdinys  and   Transactions  ciied,  '>'A,  50. 

Candles,  directors  paid  with,  209-210  :  given  to  Jesuits,  319  ;  Candlemas  distribu- 
tion, 320  ;  mistake  in  use  of,  329. 

Cap  dc  Bonne  Yue,  Cartier's  first  landfall,  20. 

Cap  Rouge,  Cartier  at,  34,  35-37.  43-44,  45,  46 ;  fort  built  at,  44  ;  Indians  refuse 
to  provision,  45  ;  Roberval  at,  40-48  ;  outbreak  of  scurvj-,  30,  47  ;  ship  built 
at.  48  ;  harassed  by  IroQuois,  349,  353. 

Cap  Tourmente,  beaver  meadows  at,  104  ;  de  Caen  at.  166  ;  supplies  Quebec  with 
fodder.  175  ;  cattle  farm  established,  177,  178  ;  harried  by  English,  183,  184, 
187  ;  seals  killed  at.  190  ;  Nicolet  at,  253  ;  de  Quen  at,  327. 

Cape  Blanc  Sahlon,  reached  by  Cartier.  22  ;  rendezvous  of  Cartier's  ships,  23. 

Cape  Breton,  trade  conceded  to  de  Monts,  82  ;  seizure  of  English  fort  at.  221 ;  in 
treaty  of  St.  Germain,  221-222 ;  rights  of  trade  reserved,  280 ;  importance  of, 
383. 

Cape  Diamond,  bounds  beaten.  328  ;  Iroquois  terrorize,  348. 

Cape  of  Good  Hope,  Huguenots  at,  381. 

Cape  Piennot,  Cartier  at,  23. 

Cape  Verde  Islands,  point  of  demarcation  in  bull  of  Alexander  VI,  14. 

Capuchins,  rise  of  order,  114;  mission  on  the  Kennebec,  288,  303. 

Caribou  skins,  allowed  to  coureurs  de  bois.  521  note,  537. 

Carignan-Saliercs  rcgiumit,  at  Quebec.  378,  379,  400,  404;  soldiers  settle  in  Can- 
ada, 392  ;  in  disputes  for  precedence.  400.     See  also  Militia,  Soldiers. 

Carpont,  n-ndezvous  of  Cartier's  fleet,  42. 

Cartier,  Jacques,  first  voyage,  19-23;  second  voyage  closes  first  cycle  of  American 
discovery,  9  ;  stimulus  of  expedition,  16  ;  narrative  gives  limit  of  earlier  ex- 
plorations, 19  ;  first  to  explore  St.  Lawrence,  20  ;  landfall.  20  ;  reason  for  sailing 
southward.  21  ;  sketch  of,  21-22 ;  geography  of  first  voyage.  22 ;  carries 
Indians  to  France,  22-23,  38-39,  40  (see  also  Domagaya.  Taignoagny).  Second 
voyage,  23-30  ;  misled  by  erroneous  maps,  23-24  ;  first  winter  quarters,  24-27, 
32.  35.  37,  87,  89,  174  (see  also  Stadacona)  ;  names  the  St.  Croix,  24,  144; 
sickness  among  his  men,  26,  29-30,  36  (sec  also  Scurvy)  ;  friendship  with 
Donnecana.  28;  Indians  oppose  farther  exploration.  28,  29;  Hochelaga.  30- 
31 ;  distrusts  Indians,  33,  37-38  ;  plants  cross,  38,  40.  Third  voyage,  39-45  ; 
results  of  first  and  second  voyages,  40-41 ;  receives  independent  commission. 
41-42 ;  sails  on  third  voyage,  42 ;  deceives  savages,  42-43 ;  second  winter 
quarters,  43-44  (.sec  also  Cap  Rouge)  ;  explores  above  Hochelaga.  44-45  ;  meets 
Roberval.  45  ;  sails  for  Brittany,  45-40  ;  names  Canada  La  Xouvelle  France, 
47;  uncertainty  of  fate  of.  49;  sent  to  rescue  Roberval,  49;  conclusions  re- 
garding St.  Lawrence  Indians  deduced  from,  51-52  ;  vocabularies  made  by.  52- 
54  ;  relations  with  Stadacona  Indians.  56-57 ;  on  Indians  of  Hochelaga.  57 
(see  also  Hurons  and  Iroquois)  ;  influence  of  voyages  on  commerce.  65,  68; 
leader  in  colonization,  67  ;  claim  on  French  government,  69  ;  ob.iect  of  voyages. 
78-79;  winter  food,  88;  claims  of  St.  Malo  merchants  through,  102-103: 
under  "The  Tree,"  322  note;  first  Canadian  prospector.  324. 

"  Cartier's  tree,"  37. 

Casgrain,  Ahbe  Henri  R.,  Sulpician.  cited.  239;  editor  of  Journal  des  Jesuits,  315". 

Casot,  Jean  Joseph  (last  .Tesuit  in  Canada),  death  of,  315;  Jesuit  lands  confis- 
cated on  death  of.  478 

Castillon.  Jacques,  incorporator  of  Company  of  One  Hundred  Associates,  207;  not 
qualified  as  seigneur,  264. 

"Catherine,"  ship  of  de  Caen  Company,  174. 


INDEX.  549 

Catignon.  Charles,  summons  Gitton,  531. 

Cimohnaicauhii.  Que.  Indian  poijulation  of  {]901).  370  note. 

Cuumont,  .lean,  liit  le  Mons.  clerk  of  Comiiany  of  Associates,  145-140.  147-148. 

Cajiufia  Lake,  boundary  of  Onondaga  terrirory,  50. 

C'ai/M.'/ns.  Huron-lroqiiois  tribe  belonging  l<>  loagne.  ask  for  peace  and  return  of 
Jesuits.  358;  fighting  strength  of.  3t;i. 

Cazot.     See  Casot. 

OenHtaircs,  tenants  under  feudal  aystem,  235;  eens  et  rentes  paid  by.  236-237. 
239  ;  lods  et  vents  imposed  upon,  237,  23f>,  493  note ;  manner  of  paying.  239. 
See  also  Feudal  system. 

Ghabancl,  Noi'h  Jesuit,  death  of,  3(11-302.. 

Chalon, ,  revenue  agent,  lays  an  embargo  on  goods  of  the  Vompuijnic  du  Nord, 

518,  519. 

Cliamhhi  Roi)ids.  Indians  desert  at,  92;  allies  take  leave  of  Champlain  at,  94. 

Chamhulon, ,  notary.  536,  538. 

Chainpiijini.  Jean  lioehnit  <le.  Intendant  of  Canada    (16S6-1702),  396:  asked  how- 
cures  are  to  be  supported,  448  note ;  cited,  47U  ;  incurs  anger  of  Saint  Vallier, 
-    489;  Louis  XIV.  to,  533,  534. 

Champlain,  Helcne  Boullv  <le,  marriage  contract  with  Champlain.  90,  243:  arrival 
in  Canada,  140,  141,  161  ;  life  in  Canada.  107-168;  death.  243;  life  of,  167. 

Champlain ,  Samuel  de,  finds  relics  of  Cartier's  expedition,  32  :  account  of  Ilober- 
val's  colon}',  49;  founds  Quebec.  51,  78,  86;  finds  Stadacora  succeeded  by 
Quebec.  55,  55  note.  58,  72  ;  Algonquin  alliance  with.  57  ;  aids  JIurons  against 
Senecas,  50  ;  meets  De  Chaste  and  sails  for  the  St.  Lawrence,  72  ;  sketch  of, 
72,  24S  ;  arrives  at  Quebec  (1()03).  72,  (1008)  78;  joins  De  Monts.  73;  experi- 
ences in  Acadia,  73-76 ;  explores  New  England  coast,  76-77  ;  appeals  to  Mme. 
de  Guercheville,  77,  95;  advises  abandoning  Acadia,  77,  83;  in  command  of 
new  expedition,  77 ;  compromises  with  Basque  traders,  78 :  explores  the 
Saguenay,  78;  at  Tadousac.  78,  90,  122,  128.  140;  conspiracy  against.  87-8S  ; 
first  winter  in  Quebec,  89-00  {see  also  Quebec,  habitation  de)  ;  first  raid 
against  Iroquois.  00,  02-03,  07;  effect  of  alliance  with  Ilnrons,  90-92,  93-91; 
gifts  to,  04;  returns  to  France  (1600),  04;  audience  with  Henry  IV,  05; 
sails  for  Canada  (1610),  9.5-96;  at  Quebec.  96,  101,  108.  120,  122,  126.  130. 
132  ;  fur  trader,  0(i07,  09-101  (see  also  Commercial  Companies)  ;  in  exjyedi- 
tion  against  Iroquois,  97-98;  leaves  I)n  Pare  in  charge  at  Quebec.  98;  mar- 
riage of,  09;  lieutenant  of  Conde,  102,  103,  104;  aversion  to  Malonius,  102- 
103  ;  lieutenant  of  Soissons,  103.  I(i4  ;  alternates  winter  garrison  of  Quebec. 
104;  explores  the  Ottawa.  100;  names  island  of  St.  Helen,  110;  introduces 
Maisonneuve  to  Indians,  110;  establishes  Recollets  in  New  France,  111-112, 
117;  leaves  for  Huron  country,  118:  ignored  in  records  of  Recollets,  12i>,  133. 
134.  135;  entertains  Huron  chief.  120;  holds  council  at  Three  Rivers.  130- 
131  ;  sails  for  France  (1618),  132;  his  difficulties  in  adjusting  interests  of 
colony  and  company,  134,  13.5-136,  158;  his  place  of  abode  from  1020-1632, 
134;  refuses  to  exercise  a  divided  authority,  136-140;  convokes  assembly, 
152-153;  organizes  a  civil  government,  154,  506  note;  deprivations  at  Que- 
bec. 161-164 ;  work  on  Chateau  St.  Louis,  164-165  (see  also  Chateau  St. 
Louis):  leaves  De  Caen  In  charge  at  Quebec.  166;  reports  to  king.  ItiO; 
under  De  Ventadour.  170.  173:  sails  for  Canada  (16i;6).  174;  eslal)lishes 
cattle  farm,  177,  178:  enlarges  Fort  St.  Louis.  177  ( s( r  also  Fort  St.  Louis)  ; 
opposes  war  on  Iroquois,  179,  180.  182:  arrests  Indians.  180:  faces  famine, 
182.  186,  187-180.  102.  107;  warned  of  approach  of  English  fleet.  I.s3:  re- 
;uses  to  surrender,  184-185;  releases  Indians.  189-190:  sends  ship  to  France, 
100-101:  warned  of  return  of  English,  102-193:  receives  second  summons. 
193-104;  submits  terms  of  capitulation,  194.  195:  cited.  106:  deposithm  of, 
197,  201  ;  sails  witli  Kirke.  107,  108,  100;  informed  of  establishment  of  Com- 


SSP  INDEX. 

pany  of  Hundred  Associates.  201,  211 ;  receives  details  of  English  occupatiou, 
218-219;  returns  to  Quebec  as  governor  of  New  Prance.  224.  228;  estab- 
lishes new  posts.  230;  builds  chapel,  230-231  (see  also  Notre  Dame  de  la 
Recouvrance)  ;  iiis  austere  life,  231  ;  exhorts  Indians.  240;  death  and  funeral, 
240  ;  place  of  burial,  240-242,  242  note,  356  ;  will,  242-243  ;  appointment  of 
successor,  244  ;  compared  with  Montmagny,  295-296 ;  influence  on  social  life 
of  Quebec.  390;  supports  traders  in  brand.v  controversy,  453;  Dcs  Sauvn-fjes, 
72;  Voifayes  (ed.  of  1613),  78,  86,  (ed.  of  1619)  134,  (ed.  of  1632)  72,  78, 
134-135..  198      See  also  Laverdiere. 

Chnnflcur,  FranQoin  dc.  Governor  at  Three  Rivers,  letter  from  .Togues,  276 ;  pre- 
sented with  captive  Iroquois.  283 ;  sends  captive  to  treat  for  peace,  283 ; 
absent  from  post,  315. 

Chanjim,  Guiilaiiuie,  accused  by  Gitton,  531  ;  party  to  suit  against  Gitton,  531- 
532. 

Chapaia.  Thomas,  Life  of  Talon.  44.s  note.  512  note. 

Chaplets  (rosaries),  Indi'an  use  of,  04. 

Charity,  one  of  three  Indian  girls  ieft  with  Champlain,  181  :  gathering  roots.  192  ; 
included  in  Champlain's  stipulations,  104  ;  Champlain's  affection  for,  195 ; 
left  with  Mme.  Couillard,  10.5. 

Charicari,  practise  condemned  by  Laval,  401. 

Charles  I.  of  England,  100,  211;  effect  of  execution  of  on  French  colonization, 
112;  grant  to  Sir  William  Alexander.  211  note:  signs  Petition  of  Rights, 
212;  signs  treaty  of  Suze.  212;  his  use  of  treaty,  213;  grant  to  Kirke's  Com- 
pany of  Canada,  214;  price  received  for  restoration  of  Canada.  214-215. 

Charles  II.  of  England,  poor  colonial  policy,  363  ;  grants  charter  to  Hudson  Bay 
Company,  516;  stock  in  Hudson  Bay  Company.  517  note;. 

Charles  I.  (king)  of  Spain,  V.  (emperor)  of  Germany,  14;  incites  Francis  I.  to 
American  exploration,  16,  40 ;  destroys  Algerian  pirates,  16,  40 ;  relations 
with  Francis  I.,  40  :  commercial  concessions.  67  ;  used  to  point  a  moral,  74. 

Charleshoiirg,  Que.,  Indian  population  of  1001.  370  note. 

Charlevoix,  Pierre  Francois  Xavier  de.  .Tesuit.  cited  on  early  explorations,  19.  23. 
24,  33 ;  cited  on  Hochelaga  Indians.  54 :  documents  of  treaty  proceedings 
between  New  France  and  New  England,  310  ;  religio-political  missions  of  the 
•Tesuits,  330-340,  346;  cited  411  note;  praises  Canadian  girls,  401  ;  describes 
Jesuit  college.  475-476. 

Charnisay,  Charles  <le  Menon.  Seigneur  d'Aulnay  de,  pursues  La  Tour,  306;  his 
widow  marries  La  Tour.  307  note. 

Gharron,  Claude,  elected  sjiidic.  480. 

Chartier  de  Lothiniere.  Louis  Theandre  de,  gives  first  ball  in  Canada,  403  note. 

Chartier  dc  Lothiniere.   Rene  Louis  de.  director  of  Compagnie  de  la  Colonie,  538. 

Chartres  ("Monsieur  le  Prior"),  secular  priest,  arrives  at  Quebec,  277;  beaver 
skins  confiscated  from,   290. 

Chaste.  Aymar  de,  forms  a  company,  72;  employs  Champlain.  72;  death  of,  73. 

Chasteaufort,  Marc  Antoinc  de  Bras  de  Fer,  acting  governor  of  New  France,  re- 
ceives fealty  of  Giffard.  238  ;  delivers  keys  to  Montmagny.  245. 

Chastel,  Edme.  servant  of  Mme.  d'Aillebout,  464. 

Chasielets,  .A"0f7  Juclierean.  Sieur  des,  arrives  in  Canada.  224  ;  agent  of  Company 
of  Habitants,  2S1  :  charges  against,  2S6  ;  envoy  to  France,  202,  203  ;  remains 
in  France,  202,  203  ;  concessions  secured  by,  203-204  :  to  supply  pain  henit, 
318  ;  in  Corpus  Christi  procession.  321  ;  seignorial  rights  of,  323  ;  manage- 
ment of  company  unsatisfactory,  325. 

ChastiUon   (Chatillon) .  Jean  Mif/not.  dif.  envoy  to  Huron.  203. 

Chdteau  St.  Louis,  site  of,  145,  164,  494;  building  of,  161,  164,  165;  feudal  cus- 
toms at,   236,   238 ;   garrison  of,   392 ;   reception   of  English   envoy   at,   397 ; 


INDEX.  551 

'       Schuyler  at,  399;  social  lifp  under  French  governors,  399-400;  disappearance, 

484  ;  sketch  ot,  50ii-5(i.''».     ^V•<■  also  Fort  St.   Louis,  Habitation   <lc  Quebec. 
Chdiellcnic.  a  holding  under  feiidnl  tenure,  so,  '2;i7.     Sec  al.10  Foud'il  system. 
Cathedral  of  Quebec,  raised  to  a  hasilicii.  241  :  site  of,  419;  instituted.  43(> ;  saved 
from  lire,  482;  reconstruction,  49.S ;  cathedral  chapter  organized,  379;  cathe- 
di'al  chapter  supplied,  4S3,  484  note. 
Chaudierc  Fulls,  Irocjuois  haunt,  '.ii^t't. 

Chaudiire  Hirer,  Algonquius  on,  303,  491-492:  Druillettes  on,  ?(>'>. 
Chaumont  (Chaumonot,  Chaismont),  Pierre  Joseph  Marie,  Jesuit,  arrives  in  Can- 
ada, 261:  on  Onondaga  mission.  342;  originates  Coulrateriiiiy   nl  the   Holy 
.     Family.  403  note. 
Chat(vcuu,  Pierre  J.   O..  Memoir  on  the  Sorerei(/n   Council  cited,  374  note. 

Chain  ii/ni/,  dc.  Seigneur  de  Vauhougon,  father  of  Mme.  de  la  reltrie,  259. 

Chauviiiny,  Madeleine  de.     Sec  I.a  Peltrie. 

Chauvvn. ,  Huguenot  naval  ca[)tain,  receives  trade  monopoly  from  Ileiiry  IV., 

70:  at  Tadousac.  71  ;  death  ol,  71. 
Chavigny  de  Berchercaui  FrnnQois,  member  of  council,  299. 
Chavin    (Chauvin).   Pierre,   in   command  at  Quebec,   04,  96,   103-104:   returns  to 

France.  98. 
CheffaiiU,  Antoine,  Sieur  de  la  Ueunrdii"  re.  aids  Company  of  One  Hundred   Asso- 
ciates through  Cheffault-Uozee  t'onipany,  22S  ;  receives  soigneury  of  Beauprf-, 
264. 
Oherokecs,  of  Iroquois  stock,  .56. 

China,  trade  with  opened  by  I'ortugal,  7:   regarded  as  a  mirage,  7:  theories  on 
western  passage  to,  8 :  search  for  western  passage.  9 ;  St.  Lawrence  to  be  ex- 
plored far  route  to,  105,  173. 
Chinese  ritea.  result  of  .Jesuit  discussion  of,  314  note;  referred  to,  473. 
Chomina.  Moutagnais  chief,  brings  venison  to  colonists.   188;  pleads  for  accused 
Indians.  189;  sent  to  trade  with  Ilurons  for  food,  192;  Becollets  propose  to 
escape  with,  197. 
Chourcl,  Mathicu,  house  burned,  351. 
Chretiennaut,  a  refractory  servant,  816. 
Christian  fsrand,  Huron  refugees  on,  302. 

Churches.     See  Notre  Dame  des  Anges  (chapel  on  .Tesuit  Residence).  Notre  Dame 
des  Anges    (Kecollet).    Notre   Dame   de  la   Recouverance,   Notre  Dame   de  la 
\'ictoire,  Notre  Dame  de  Quebec,  Parish  churches.  Recollet  church. 
Citadel  of  Quebec,  site  of,  87.  495. 
Clement  V.,  Pope,  modifies  rules  of  St.  Francis.  115. 

Cletiicnt  X.,  Pope,  forbids  publication  of  missionary  records,   314   note. 
Cochran,  Andrew  ^]  illiani,  mentioned,  315. 
Coilc  Napoleon,  general  use  of,  234. 

Colbert,  .lean  lUipiiste,  French  premier,  effect  of  Knglish  republicanism  on  colonial 
policy  of,  137-138,  376  ;  enters  upon  government  of  Canada.  33,3.  363.  372  : 
uses  civil  power  to  counteract  ecclesiastical.  38.5.  437  :  pleased  with  progress 
of  Canadian  shipbuilding,  3.85  ;  views  on  trade,  387  ;  builder  of  French  navy, 
388  ;  opposed  to  Laval's  arrogance,  431  :  warns  Courcelles,  433  ;  refused  abso- 
lution, 457;  urges  expulsion  of  Fnglish  from  Hudson  P.ay.  51N. 
Coliqny,  Gaspard  de.  Admiral  of  France,  colonizati<m  schemes  of,  (is,  112. 
Colin,  Michel,  death  of,  119. 

Collier, ,  partner  of  De  Moiits,  09.   ^(\■J. 

Colonics,  formative  influence  of  lOnglish,  17:  first  founded  through  corporate 
co-operation,  67-68;  constituticm  of  French  exemplified  by  concessions  (l.'j98). 
79-81,  (1603)  81-83:  constitution  of  English  exemplified  by  charters  (1583- 
1584)'  84.  (1603)  156,  (1618)  157-158:  policy  of  France  in,  137-1.39,  154.  I'.iO- 
200,  204-205.  524,  526-527:  policy  of  Fng'^mrt   iu.  158-159,   160  161.  524-525, 


552 


INDEX. 


525  note.  527-528  ;   Colonial  Papers  cited,   214,   218.     See  also  colonies  and 
countries  by  name,  also  Commercial  Companies. 

Columbus,  Vhrisioplier,  first  voyage  promoted  by  Spain,  7  ;  counsels  with  Tos- 
canelli,  8  ;  American  laudlall  of,  8  ;  effect  of  Asiatic  theory  of,  8-'J  ;  state  of 
Church  of  Rome  at  period  of  discoveries  of,  11-12;  compared  to  Cartier,  20, 
38-39  ;  his  doubt  of  Asiatic  theory,  24  ;  his  caravels  superior  to  "  Le  Coquin," 
101. 

Comballet,  Mme.  de.    See  Aiguillon. 

Commerce.     See  Trade. 

Commercial  Companies:  rise  and  development  of,  65-67;  English  (early),  67,  83- 
84,  (recent)  527-528;  character  and  constitution  of  French  colonial,  78-83; 
created  for  development  of  North  America,  154-155;  restrictions  of  French, 
200;  Hanseatic  League,  65;  "English  Uegulated,"  67,  108;  Bonnaisseux" 
Orande  Compagnic  de  Commerce,  GO. 

C'lmpany  of  Associates  (De  Ciiaste's),  succeeds  Chauvin,  72;  formation, 
72;  dissolution,  73. 

Company  of  Associates  (De  Monts')  instituted,  73,  81-83;  privileges 
suppressed,  74,  83,  1)4:  establish  Quebec,  83,  'Jo,  101,  103;  headquarters,  95; 
privileges  expire,  95,  97,  98,  99  ;  De  Monts  withdraws,  102  ;  dissolved,  102  ; 
policy,  107  ;  inadequacy,  205-206. 

Company  of  Associates,  organized  by  Champlain,  102-103;  patronized  by 
Conde,  102.  104;  powers  of,  104-105:  as  a  colonizer,  100,  107,  119-120,  122 
123,  124,  127-128,  135,  138;  constitution  of,  108;  vessels,  108;  jealousy 
among  associates,  110  111,  124-125.  127:  confiscate  cargo  of  Rochellaise 
vessel.  111  ;  franchise  extended.  111  ;  establishes  Recollets  in  Canada,  111- 
112;  interests  of,  121;  Recollets  dissatisfied  with,  121,  144;  affected  by 
Huguenot  reverses,  123;  opposed  in  France.  124,  127;  persecute  Hebert,  125; 
articles  drawn  by  De  Monts,  124  ;  gives  Conde's  salary  to  Recollets,  127,  139  ; 
privileges  threatened  by  free  trade  act.  127;  Indian  policy  of,  129;  difficulty 
in  tracing  history.  134  ;  divided  on  trade  issues,  135-136  ;  attempts  to  remove 
Champlain,  136-137,  140:  enjoined  by  Louis  XIII.,  138;  Montmorency  suc- 
ceeds Conde  in,  139;  authority  of  Champlain  confirmed.  140;  dissolved  in 
favor  of  Company  of  De  Caen.  146;  Champlain  instructed  to  seize  property 
of,  147  ;  protected  by  Champlain,  147 ;  contentions  with  Company  of  De  Caen, 
147-151  ;  consolidates  with  Company  of  De  Caen,  162;  trade,  174-175;  causes 
of  failure,  205-206.  224. 

Company  of  De  Caen,  chartered  by  Montmorency,  146-147  ;  troubles  at 
Quebec  with  Company  of  Associates,  147-149,  150-151  ;  king's  degree,  149  ; 
consolidates  with  Company  of  Associates,  162  ;  indifference  to  welfare  of  col- 
onists, 103,  170,  177,  196;  sectarian  complaints  against.  170,  173;  conten- 
tions in.  170;  inhospitality  to  Jesuits,  172:  capital  of,  173-174;  enjoined  to 
employ  Catholic  admiral.  171;  details  of  trade,  175:  quarrels  with  Jesuits, 
179  ;  weakness  made  known  to  English,  185  ;  superseded  by  Company  of  One 
Hundred  Associates,  186,  201,  207 ;  liotel  property  seized  by  English,  195, 
197,  215,  216-218;  causes  of  failure,  205-206;  associates,  206;  object  of 
Kirke"s  raid,  21.3-214;  value  of  trade,  214  note;  allowed  a  year  for  settle- 
ment, 218,  221  :  settlement  with  English,  221-222 ;  expiration  of  monopoly, 
265 ;  payments  received  from  Company  of  One  Hundred  Associates,  266. 

Company  of  Morhihini ,  organized,  205;  sketch  of,  2o5  ;  constitution,  206. 
Company  of  One  Hundred  Associates  (Company  of  New  France,  Com- 
pany of  Canada),  fleet  seized  by  English,  185-186,  211  ;  succeeds  Company  of 
De  Caen,  186,  201,  205;  established  by  Richelieu.  205-206;  date  of  charter, 
200 ;  Huguenots  barred  from,  2O6-207 ;  incorporators.  207,  S72  ;  duties  and 
powers.  207-209  ;  articles  of  partnership.  209-210  ;  Interregnum  between  in- 
•^■~  corporation  and  operation,  210,  224  ;  send  out  fleet  under  Daniel.  221  ;  begin- 


INDEX.  553 

ning  of  operations  in  Canada,  224,  225;  financial  straits,  225-22G.  228,  205; 
aided  by  auxiliary  company  (Cheffault-Rozf'e).  225-226,  22S.  265-2tJG  ;  resign 
privileges  to  people  of  Canada,  220,  27!)-2S0,  315,  371-372  (sir  ulno  Company 
of  Habitants)  ;  transfer  riglits  to  Louis  XIV.,  226,  33^;  336,  371,  376;  state- 
ment of  accounts,  226-227  ;  cedes  lands  to  Jesuits,  230,  253  ;  tenure  of  lands 
held  iiy,  234-235,  237 ;  ctiapel  in  storeliouse  of.  242 ;  appoints  successor  to 
Champlain,  244,  282,  317,  322 ;  promoters  of  religion,  248 ;  site  of  store- 
house, 262  ;  gifts  for  advancement  of  Indians,  264  ;  trade  checked  by  Iroquois, 
265,  266,  276.  279;  consent  to  grant  of  Montreal  Island,  271  ;  oppose  estab- 
lishment of  Montreal,  272  ;  bankruptcy.  27<),  360  ;  relations  with  the  church, 
277-278,  279,  286  ;  friction  with  Company  of  Habitants,  281-282.  286  ;  popu- 
lar revolt  against,  286-287,  372;  under  constitution  of  1647.  289-290;  retain 
seignorial  rights,  291  ;  small  revenues,  293  ;  lethargy,  296  ;  shelters  .Te.suits, 
316;  policy,  333;  sketch  of.  371-372;  succeeded  by  Company  of  West  Indies. 
376,  517;  refuse  to  listen  to  Radisson  and  Groseilliers,  515-516;  claim  to 
Hudson  Bay  territory,  516. 

Company  of  Hahiianix,  receives  trading  rights,  226,  279-280,  315,  371- 
372  ;  terms  of  concession,  280-281.  286  ;  first  transaction,  281  ;  dissensions, 
286-287,  291-292,  325;  appeal  for  revision  of  treaty,  287;  under  Constitution 
of  1647,  289.  291  ;  causes  of  failure,  292  ;  trade  checked  by  Iroquois,  292-293  ; 
consignments,  316,  324-31:5. 

Companij  of  the  West  [udies  (French),  abolition  of,  375;  succeeds  Com- 
pany of  One  Hvmdred  Associates,  376,  517;  scope  and  object.  376;  privileges 
and  obligations,  376-377  ;  history,  377-378  ;  Canada  under,  378-379,  394  ;  per- 
mits English  encroachment  on  Hudson  Bay,  517-518. 

Compooaie  <hi  Koid  (Compagnie  de  la  baye  d"IIudson.  etablie  en  Canada. 
Compagnie  du  Canada),  employ  Radisson  and  Groseiliers.  518;  successful  ex- 
pedition, 518;  cargo  seized  by  revenue  agents,  518;  post  seized  by  English. 
519;  hold  meeting  at  Quebec.  519,  529-531  ;  patent  of  incorporation.  519;  re- 
organization and  confusion  of  titles.  520  ;  disputes  between  I*  rench  and  Cana- 
dian shateholders,  520,  521  ;  decline,  521  ;  privileges  revoked,  521  ;  process 
against  Gitton,  531-532  ;  correspondence  with  Louis  XIV.,  532-536. 

Compagnie  (hi  Canada  (Compagnie  du  Castor,  Compagnie  de  la  Colonie), 
established,  521 ;  bankrupts  farmer  of  revenue,  521  ;  system  of  reorganization, 
521  ;  contract  with  couretirs  de  hoiSj  521   note,  536-538. 

Mississippi  Company   (French),  ill  success  of,  524. 

African  Company  (English),  organization  of,  67. 

British  S'orth  Borneo  Company,  founded,  527. 

British  f^oitth  Africa  Copipany,  527-528. 

Company  of  Canada  (Merchant  Adventurers  to  Canada),  English,  or- 
ganized by  Kirke,  214  ;  duration  and  losses  of,  215,  216  ;  property  seized  by, 
216-217. 

Company  of  Plymouth  Adrcntureis  (English),  established.  83-84,  155- 
156;  unsuccessful  venture,  156. 

East  India  Company,  first  of  great  English  stock  companies,  67. 

Hudson  Bay  Company  (English)  colonization  inimical  to  Interests  of, 
123,  136,  155,  524  note;  founded.  516;  invades  Freucli  territory.  516.  517- 
518;  Albanel  reconnoiters.  516-517;  apology  of  directors.  517  >io^c.-  .lollet 
sent  to  report  on.  518:  attacked  by  French,  518;  challenged  by  La  Barre. 
519-520;  De  Troyes"  attack  on,  520,  523;  summary  of  conflicts  with  French, 
520  ;  charter  of,  525  note. 

Imperial  British  Fast  Africa  Company,  creation  and  sale  of,  527. 

Levant  Company   (English),  establishment  of.  67. 

London  Company  (English),  created,  83,  155;  antecedents,  83-84;  com- 
position of  reorganized,  84,  157;  purpose,  155:  first  expedition,  156,  157; 
charter,  (1606)  155-157,  (1618)  157-158. 


554  INDEX. 

Northwest  Fur  Company    (English),   inimical   to   colonization,   136,   524 
note. 

Roitul  Xi</cr  Cotnpanii   (Englisli).  sale  of,  527. 
Russian    (M uscovy)   Company   (lOnglisli),  organization  of,  67. 
German  East  Africa  Company,  resigns  governing  functions,  528. 
German   Yeic  Ciiinca  Company,  resigns  governing  functions,  528. 
Portujjuese  Merchants'  Company,  foimdiug  and  purpose  of,  67. 
Brazil  Company   (Portuguese),  founding  of,  67. 
United  New  Netlnrlund  Company  (Dutch),  founds  factory,  84. 
West   India    Company    (Dutch),    selfish    policy    of,    155.      /See   also    Fur 
trade,  Jesuits,  Trade. 

Comporte.     See  Gauthier. 

Comte,  a  holding  under  feudal  tenure.  80.     See  also  Feudal  system. 

Conde.  Henri  de  Bourbon,  Prince  de,  Viceroy  of  New  France,  has  Champlaln  for 
his  lieutenant,  102,  103,  104  ;  succeeds  Soissons,  103  ;  renews  trading  priv- 
ileges, 104;  commission  to  Champlain,  104-105;  political  status  of.  107; 
grants  passport  to  Maisonneuve,  110  ;  Imprisoned.  124  ;  protests  against  diver- 
sion of  salary,  127  ;  gift  to  Recollets,  139  ;  sells  viceroyalty,  139. 

Connecticut  Colony,  member  of  confederation,  308;  sale  of  firearms  to  Iroquois 
checked  in,  309  :  reasons  for  alliance  with  French,  310. 

Constitution,  autocratic  nature  of,  220;  of  1647,  289,  289  note,  299.  826;  of 
1663.  372-373,   374-375. 

Conventuals,  suborder  of  Franciscans,  sketch  of,  116. 

Cooper,  Samuel,  limits  power  of  British  navy,  398  note. 

Copper,  early  rumors  of,  32.  386  ;  explorers  commissioned  to  seek,  173  ;  discovery 
of,  324,  386. 

Corneille,  ,  clerk,  delivers  keys  to  Kirke,  195. 

Corneille,  Pierre,  Heraclius    given  at  Quebec,  402  ;  Le  Cid    given  at  Quebec,  402. 

Cortereal,  Gaspard,  and  Miguel,  expeditions  of,  15  ;  results  of  reports  of,  19. 

Corvee  (statute-laboi-).  enforced  in  Quebec,  505.     iS'ce  also  Feudal  system. 

Cosset,  Rene,  eoureur  de  bois,  text  of  contract,  536-538. 

Cote,  George,  investigations  of,  241. 

Cote  de  Beauprc,  I.ahontan  at.  490-491. 

Cote  de  Lauzon,  population  of,  379. 

Cote  Ste.  Genevieve,  mill  built  on,  323. 

Coton,  Pierre,  Jesuit,  inspires  Mme.  de  Guerchevllle's  interest  in  Jesuit  missions, 
77. 

Cotton,  Jean,  eoureur  de  bois,  text  of  contract,  536-538. 

Coudran,  ,  Jesuit,  influence  on  Mme.  do  la  Peltrie,  259-285. 

Coudre  sur  Xarrean,  France,  beaver  skins  seized  at,  82. 

CouiUard,  GniUaume,  Sleur  de  I'Espinay,  early  colonist,  169;  refuses  to  sail  ship, 
183;  English  agree  to  respect  property  of.  105;  in  Quebec  during  English 
occupation,  198,  219,  223;  daughter  christened  210;  persuades  Hurons  to  con- 
vey priests,  232  :  joins  expedition  against  Iroquois,  246  ;  site  of  house.  322. 
481  notes  altar  in  house,  322. 

CouiUnrd,  Mme.  Guillaume  inee  Hubert),  authority  on  Iroquois  raid,  167;  takes 
charge  of  Indian  girls,  195;  land  bought  from.  481. 

CouiUard,  Louis  Guillaume,  Sieur  de  TEspinay,  imports  oxen,  200  ;  finds  body  of 
Lauzon,  357. 

Council  of  1S.',7,  composition  of.  289,  299  ;  duties.  289 ;  powers,  289  ;  modified,  294  ; 
negotiations  with  New  England  commissioners.  310 ;  power  of  the  church  In, 
526. 

Conncil  of  1663  (Conseil  Sup^rieur),  constituted,  373,  379,  445,  505;  composition 
of,  373.  374,  505:  powers.  37.3-374.  505,  512;  cases  covered  by,  374  note- 
action  on  tithe  ordinance,  445,  447-448,   448   note;  action   on   liquor  traffic. 


INDEX. 


sss 


xd4,    457-458 ;    meeting   place    of.    494-495 ;    sketch    of,    505-50G ;    ordinances, 

512;  powers  of  tlie  claurcli  in,  526;  Edits  ct  Ordonnaticcs,  492  note;  Chau- 

veau's  MemoU\  cited,  374  note. 
Council  Provincial^  484. 
Courcclle,  Daniel  dc  Remij,   Seigneur  de,   governor   of   New   France    (1665-1672), 

378,  394,  432  ;  arrives  at  Quebec.  378-379  ;   investigates  cliarges  against  De 

Mezy,  432  :  resents  ecclesiastical  control,  43.'> ;  blames  .Jesuits  for  perQdy  of 

converts,  433  ;  hostile  to  Laval    435  ;  recalled,  436 ;  plan  to  protect  fur  trade, 

508. 
Courcuis  dc  hois,  influence  of  on  expansion  of  New  France,  131 ;  obnoxious  to  civil 

and  religious  government,  132,  165-166;  defy  liquor  laws,  454;  contract  with 

employers,  521  note,  536-538. 
Courscron,  Gilbert,  signs  petition  to  the  king,  153;  civic  office  of,  154. 
Coussinoe  (Koussenac),  now  Augusta.  Me.,  Druillettes  at,  305-306:  farmer  of  men- 
tioned, 307. 
Coutume  dc  Paris,  law  of  Quebec,  234  ;  law  of  New  France,  377.     See  also  Feudal 

system. 
Couture,  Guillaunie,  returns  from  captivity,  283  ;  Iroquois  seek  refuge  in  house  of, 

349. 
Cramoisy,  Schastian,  incorporator  of  Hundred  Associates,  372  note. 
Crees,  Algonquin  tribe,  51. 

Criminals,  sent  as  colonists,  41-42,  at  Cap  Rouge,  47. 

CromiccU,  Oliver,  effect  of  wars  of  on  French  alliance,  310;  colonial  policy  of,  368. 
Cudrauny,  Indian  god.  threatens  Cartier,  29. 

Cuilleric,  Jean  Baptistc,  coureiir  de  hois,  text  of  contract,  536-538. 
Cures.     See  Secular  clergy. 

Currency,  copper  of  Quebec.  512  note;  boavcr,  521;  card.  522. 
Uahlon.  Claude,  Jesuit,  on  Onondaga  mission,  342  ;  Relations  cited,  385,  386. 
IJablon,  Simon,  member  of  Hundred  Associates.  207. 
Daillon,  La  Roche.     See  La  Roche  Daillon. 
Dancinij,  on  Mardi  Gras,  disapproved  by  priests,  325 ;  on  St.  John's  day.  328 ; 

first  ball  in  Canada,  403  note;  approved  by  Frontenac,  404.     See  also  IJallet. 
Daniel,  .\ntoine,  Jesuit,  obliged  to  defer  Huron  mission,  229-230  ;  at  Three  Rivers, 

2S2  ;  starts  on  Huron  mission,  232;  martyred,  233,  293;  return  of.  247. 
Daniel,  Charles,  in  command  of  vessel  with  emigrants  and  supplies  for  Quebec,  221 ; 

raids  English  setclement,  221. 

Darachc,  .  Basque  trader,  fires  on  Portgravf',  78. 

Daran.  Adricn,  Jesuit,  starts  on  Huron  mission.  300. 

Daui)hin  of  France.     See  Louis  XIV. 

Davenport,  John,  schismatic,  76. 

Davost,  Amhroise,   Jesuit,    obliged    to    defer   Huron    mission,    229-230;    enterB   on 

Huron  mission,  232-233  ;  return  and  enthusiasm  of.  247. 
Dehenac,  Pierre,  Controller-Oeneral   of  the  king's  farms  In  Canada,  asks  aid  for 

Compagnie  du  Nord,  533,  535. 
De  Kahii.     See  Ka!m. 
Dc  la  Pole,  William,  Earl  of  Suffolk,  also  Count  of  Bri-Quebec,  suggests  Norman 

origin  of  Quebec.  55  note. 
Delaware  River,  Dutch  colonies  on.  155. 

Delins, ,  of  the  Compagnie  de  la  Colon ie,  538. 

Delino,  Mathieu.  joins  in  asking  aid  for  the  Compagnie  du  Nord,  534.  535. 

Delorme,  See  Soumande. 

De  Maistre.     See  Lo  Maistrs. 

Demonic,  ,  in  Compagnie  du  Nord.  533.  535. 

Demonolooy,  perplexes  Indians,  250. 

Denis.  Simon,  Sieur  de  Vitro,  owns  flour  mill,  351;  servant  taken  by  Laval,  424- 

425. 


5  56  INDEX. 

Denonrille,  Jacques  Bene  de  Bn'naij,  Marquis  dc.  Governor  of  Canada  (1685-1689), 
urges  building  of  forge,  385  ;  unable  to  quell  Iroquois,  3!)5  ;  endeavors  to  ad- 
just tithes,  448  note;  dislike  for  Canadian  traits,  491  ;  builds  powder  magazine, 
501  :  opposes  the  use  of  Fort  Xelson  as  neutral  post,  523. 

Denys,  Jean,  explorations  of,  19. 

De  Fere,  iri's.,  origin  of  name.  .387. 

De  Peyras,  carries  report  of  Council  to  France.  458. 

De  Pvort,  ,  carries  report  of  Council  to  France.  458. 

De  Saurel, ,  member  of  the  Compagnie  de  la  Baye  d'Hudson,  532. 

Des  Bodes,  Charles,  Recollet,  Grand  vicaire  de  Pontoise,  his  name  given  to  St. 
Charles  River  25.  144;  receives  description  of  Recollet  monastery,  142,  143; 
aid  to  Recollets,  144  ;  belief  in  education.  462. 

Deschesnes   (Des  Chenes),  Thomas  Poree,  in  Company  of  De  Caen,  140.  206. 

Desdames,  Thierry,  French  naval  captain,  sent  to  reconnoiter  English,  185; 
reaches  Quebec,  186  :  sails  in  "  Le  Coquin,"  191 ;  brings  letter  to  Champlaln, 
201  ;  pursues  Iroquois,  246. 

Des  Hostels,  Joseph,  dit  Lapointe,  eoureur  de  hois,  text  of  contract,  536-538. 

Desmoulins,  ,  sent  to  free  traders  for  assistance,  189. 

Des  Ormeau.T,  Daulac  (Dollard),  self-sacrifice  of,  355,  356. 

Desportes,  Pierre,  signs  petition  to  king,  153  ;  early  colonist,  169  ;  under  English, 
223. 

Destouehes,  .  ensigii  of  Champlain,  174. 

De  Verr/er,  .  General  of  Order  of  Franciscans,  111. 

Dieppe,  France,  fishing  industry  of,  69-70:  Jesuits  sail  from,  171-172;  nuns  from, 
26],  269;  Montreal  colonists  sail  from.  271. 

Dionne,  N.  E.,  Etudes  Historiqucs,  242  note. 

Dogs,  used  for  draught,  509. 

Dollard.     See  Des  Ormeaus. 

Dollier  de  Casson,  Francois,  Sulpician.  explores  Lake  Erie,  390 ;  humility  of, 
411  ;  Histoire  de  Montreal,  cited,  271,  411,  413-414. 

Doht,  — — -,  chief  usher  of  France,  appointed  Intendant  of  New  France,  139  ;  con- 
firms authority  of  Champlain,  140  ;  solicits  arms  for  Champlain,  146  ;  orders 
seizure  of  property  of  Company  of  Associates,  147  :  defines  rights  and  duties 
of  companies.  149  :  member  of  Company  of  De  Caen,  206. 

Domagaya,  Indian  boy,  taken  to  France  by  Cartier,  geographical  aid  of,  22-23,  27  ; 
experience  in  France.  27-28,  40,  42 ;  opposes  Cartier's  advance,  28 ;  visits 
Cartier,  32  ;  terrifies  explorers,  33-34  ;  advises  remedy  for  scurvy,  36  ;  plots 
against.  37-38  :  capture  of,  38-.39  :  fate  of.  40.     See  also  Taignoagny. 

Dominicans,  protectors  of  Indians,  17,  112;  inquisitors,  113;  foundation  of  order 
of,  113;  austerity  of,   114. 

"  Don  de  Dfen,"  vessel  of  Champlain's  fleet,  228. 

Dongan.  Thomas,  Governor  of  New  York,  cited  on  liquor  traflic,  450. 

Donnccana,  Indian  chief,  guides  Cartier,  24  ;  stockade  of,  26,  34.  87:  his  aid  solic- 
ited, 27  :  professions  of  friendship.  28  :  attempts  to  prevent  ascent  to  Iloche- 
laga.  29  :  entertains  Cartier.  32  ;  conspiracy  against,  37-38 ;  seizure  of,  38- 
39  :  fate,  40.  42  :  descendants,  55,  88. 

Dooyentate,  Peter,  cited.  56. 

Dorchester  Bridge,  25. 

Dosquet,  Pierre,  Bishop  of  Quebec,  deplores  social  laxity,  406. 

Dondiettes, ,  solicits  aid  for  Compagnie  du  Xord,  533. 

Doughty,  Arthur  George,  cited,  496  note.  503,  504. 

Dovglai.  ^yilliam.  Snmmary  of  British  Settlements  in  1^'orth  .imerica,  cited,  520. 

Droiiin.  Mme.  Robert,  burial  of.  327. 

Druillcttes.  Gahriel.  .Tesuit.  in  charge  of  Algonquins,  288,  303:  sketch  of,  303-304; 
political  agent.  288.  303-304  ;  first  visit  to  New  England,  305-306,   307-309  ; 


INDEX. 


SS? 


reports  to  Quobcc,  HIO;  title  of  priest  omitted,  ;!1(>:  seeor.rt  visH  to  New  Kng- 
laud,  HlO-312;  returns  to  (Quebec,  '.Hi  ;  aecompanies  l.e  Mojne,  ."."((i ;  report  on 
population  of  New  iiugland,  :W2  ;  JouiikiIs    referred  to,  .'{0!i-;!l(». 

Duchesne,  A 'Iricri,  early  eolonist.  l(ii) ;  transfers  land  to  Martin,  2113. 

Dvchenne,  Almc.  Adrie.n,  sponsor  in  baptism.  21!». 

Duvhcsiic,  JJuvkl,  member  of  Hundred  Associates,  207. 

Diichcsneau,  Jacques,  Sieur  de  la  Doussiniere.  Uiteudant  of  New  Fraiiee  (1075- 
1682),  375;  quarrels  witb  governor,  370,  441.  4.50;  partisan  of  Laval.  3H4, 
441;  arrives  in  Canada,  394  395,  441,  454-455;  recalled,  305,  458;  urged  to 
act  against  English  at  Hudson  liay,  518. 

Dudleij.  TJwiiKis.  CJovcrnor  of  Massachusetts  colony,  entertains  l>nilllettes.  3l»3, 
3((7  ;  friendly  to  French..  308. 

Dndoui/t,  -/rail,  priest,  vicar  for  Laval,  304:  sent  to  I'aris  to  plead  against  brandy 
tratHc,  456,  457  :  advises  Laval,  458  ;  arrives  at  Quebec,  466. 

DuclUno,  a  common  practise.  320-321. 

Duffcrin  Terrace,  site  of,  145,  494. 

Dufourncl, ,  claim  for  tithes,  448  tiole. 

Diilhut  {Diiliitli).  lianiel  Greysoion,  reaches  the  Mississippi,  390. 

Uulitth,  Minn,  origin  of  name.  387. 

Du  Murain,  ,  at  Uucbee,  I'.X). 

Duma!/, agent  of  Do  Caen  Company,  intercepts  le  Mons,  146;  bearer  of  dis- 
patches to  Champlain,  146-147;  guards  habitation.  148;  sent  to  de  Caen,  149. 

Du  Mrsnil  i DitinC''nuI) .  Jran  Peronnc,  Sieur  de  Maze,  investigates  Company  of 
Hundred  Associates,  372  ;  accused  by  Jesuits.  429. 

Dumnnt, ,  king's  commissioner,  arrives  in  Canada.  363-364. 

Dumoiitin, ,  mui'der  of,   180-181..  235 

Dunsttcr,  Henri/,  first  president  of  Harvard  I'niversity,  466. 

Du  Pare.  Pierre,  reports  to  Champlain,  9() ;  left  in  charge  of  Quebec,  98  ;  early  In- 
habitant of  Quebec,   103. 

Du  i'/cs.sf's,  Pavipque.  Recollet.  arrives  in  (Canada.  111-112:  subdue.«  Indian  revolt, 
130,  141  :  sails  for  Prance,  132;  death  of.  141  142;  first  Canadian  schoolmas- 
ter, 462. 

Duplessislioehart ,  Ouiliamne  Quiltemoi.  assumes  possession  of  Quebec,  222  ;  ar- 
rival in  Canada,  224:  persuades  Hurons  to  guide  Jesuits,  232;  detained  by 
ice,  240;  death  of.  33G. 

Duplex.  Claude,  eoureur  de  hois,  text  of  contract.  536-538. 

Du  Pont.     See  Pontgravo. 

Duprat.  Frniirois,  in  Compagnie  du  Nord.  533.  535. 

Dn  Puin,  Zaehaiie,  in  command  of  Onondaga  expedition,  347. 

Durham  Terrace,  site  of.  145,  494. 

Dutch,  troublesome  neighbors,  84,  85  :  sell  tirearms  to  Iroquois,  84-85,  245.  246, 
275;  alliance  with  Iroquois,  93,  296;  established  on  the  Hudson.  136;  traders 
murdered  by  Mohawks,  177  ;  French  alliance  with.  244  ;  lack  spirit  of  explora- 
tion. 247;  supply  clothing  to  French  captives,  266;  refuse  to  espouse  Indian 
quarrels,   267-268. 

Duval.  Jean,  conspires  against  Champlain.  87:  execution  of.  88. 

Du  Vemai/,  ,  reports  ill  usage  of  French  by  Indians. 

Earthquake  of  lOiJS,  366-3t;S. 

East  Indies,  St.  Lawrence  to  be  explored  for  route  to,  105;  Cliamplain  to  open 
communication  v.'ith;  17.'!. 

lieu,  French  money,  value  of,  175  note. 

Edmonson,  Joseph,  Heraldry,  cited,  55  note. 

Eels,  staple  fcxjd  of  Indians,  88;  season  for  curing,  180;  exorbitant  price  of.  \^~  : 
Champlain  stipulates  price.  190:  catch  of  1646.  325. 

El'-ot,  John,  non-conformist  minister,  entertains  Druillettes,  304,  307-308;  method 
of  evangelization,  3<i7  note  ;  Lot/ick  Primer,  307  note. 

:3(> 


5S8 


INDEX. 


"Eliza  of  London,"  free  ti-aders'  ship,  216. 

"  E'nvrilluii,"  ship  of  ('artler's  fleet,  dimensions  of,  25;  OH  Lake  St.  Peter,  31; 
on  t.liiid  voyage.  42. 

Endicott,  John,  entertains  and  advises  Druillettes,  3(i9. 

England,  undervalues  discoveries  of  Cabots,  1.5;  influence  of  wars  of,  on  American 
colonies,  17;  Reformation  in,  02,  G.S  ;  claim  to  Iludscm  River  region,  84;  her 
political  freedom  obnoxious  to  French  statesmen,  187,  220 ;  intimidates  Cana- 
dians. 179;  encourages  Huguenots.  206,  210-212;  commissions  to  privateers, 
211  note;  reasons  for  neglect  of  Canada,  214;  peace  of  Ryswicl?,  399.  See 
also  Colonies.  Commercial  Companies. 

English,  their  potential  power  recognized  by  Champlain.  91  ;  to  be  checked  by 
French  affiliation  with  Ilurons,  92;  alliance  with  Iroquois,  -.IS,  296;  right  of 
trade  in  the  Levant,  95  ;  claim  Newfoundland,  1.36 ;  threaten  Quebec,  183, 
191.  192;  plunder  Cap  Tourmente.  183-184,  187;  capture  de  Roquemont,  185- 
186;  demand  surrender  of  Quebec,  193-19.');  in  possession  of  Quebec,  195-199; 
first  to  sell  liquor  to  Indians,  252;  traveler  deported  from  New  France,  270; 
advance  toward  St.  Lawrence  checked,  296;  at  Hudson  Bay,  516-517,  518, 
519,  520. 

Epidemics  among  Indians,  247,  249-250,  255,  285-286  ;  among  immigrants,  352- 
353  ;  of  cholera,  494.     See  also  Scurvy. 

Episcopal  Palace,  described,  407-498,  497  note. 

Erasmus,  Desiderius,  ignores  American  discoveries,  10;  essays  in  ref<irm,  11;  toleiance 
of.  If),  472. 

Eries  (Cat  nation),  destruction  of,  342. 

Escoumains,  Que.,  Indian  population  of    1901,  370  note. 

Etchemins.  Algonquin  tribe,  asked  to  send  food  to  Quebec,  192;  in  peace  council, 
283  ;  conclude  alliance  with  French,  192. 

Europe,  indifferent  to  discovery  of  America,  10.  12;  domination  of  religion  in,  11  ; 
religious  dissensions,  11,  12;  politics  of  sway  America,  13,  14;  influenced  by 
America,  18  ;  disrupting  forces  transferred  to  America,  62-64. 

Executioner,  felon  appointed.  329. 

Faillon,  Ahhe  Michel  Etlcnin.  Sulpician,  cited,  55  note.  219;  accuses  Company  of 
Associates  of  bigotry,  111  ;  humility  of,  411  ;  Colonic  FranQatse,  30,  242,  411. 

Faith,  one  of  three  Indian  girls  left  with  Champlain,  181  ;  with  ber  tribe,   192. 

Fauls,  Antoine,  secular  priest,  sails  from  France,  271  ;  arrives  at  Montreal,  274. 

Favreau,  Joseph,  coureiir  de  bois,  text  of  contract,  536-538. 

Fcaute,  Pierre,  .Tesuit  brother,  engaged  in  fisheries,  321. 

Feyuenonda,  Indian  village,  situation  of,  34. 

Felt)/,  Thomas,  punished  for  stealing  beaver  skins,  215. 

Fenclon.  Franqois  de  Salignac,  Abbe  de,  Sulpician,  criticises  Frontenac,  400,  438; 
arrest  of,  437. 

Ferdinand  V.  of  Castile,  11.  of  Aragon,  III.  of  Naples,  II.  of  Sicily,  marriage  of,  8. 

Ferland.  .Ahhe  J.  A.  B.,  cited,  55  note,  165,  230.  374  note.  468. 

Ferte,  Jean  Jnchereav  fils,  Sieur  de  la,  sings  in  church,  317. 

Ferry,  first  established  between  Quebec  and  Point  Levis,  510. 

Fete  Dicu  (Corpus  Christi  festival),  observances  of,  321-322,  415,  426. 

Feudal  system,  transferred  to  Canada,  16-17.  80,  233-234,  236  ;  rights  of  La  Roche 
under,  79-80,  237;  passing  of  in  France.  201-202.  234;  rights  of  king  under, 
208,  234,  235.  236.  237  ;  position  of  governor  of  Canada  under,  234.  236.  237  ; 
Coutume  de  Paris.  234,  277  :  land  tenure  under,  236.  237  ;  haute,  moyenne  et 
basse  justice  under.  236.  526  ;  fusing  effect  of.  in  Canada,  238,  239  ;  habitants 
oppressed  by,  291  ;  Company  of  West  Indies  created  under,  377  ;  corvee  (stat- 
ute-labor) under,  504-505.     See  also  Companies,  Land,  Seifjneurs,  Bcigneuries. 

Fief,  a  holding  under  feudal  tenure,  80,  235,  237;  division  of.  237-238;  of  Gron-^ 
dines,  265.     See  also   Feudal  system. 


INDEX. 


559 


Filles  de  la  Confircgaiimi,  order  of,  4]1,  -111  note. 

Firearms,  supplied  to  Indians  l).v  Diitcli,  84X5,  27') ;  supplied  to  Indians  by  Rochcl- 
laise.  J40;  Iroquois  armed  with.  2I)J:  RnsHsli  restrict  sale  of,  309.  See  also 
Armament,  Artillery. 

Firc-icood,  sale  of.  established.   317;   price  of  in   1640,   325. 

Fires,  of  1640.  241.  316;  in  temporary  chapel,  317;  frequency  of,  .^51,  482;  meth- 
od of  extinguishing.  351;  of  1701,  482;  ordinance  against  roadside,  ."jnO ; 
chimney  tax  imposed.  510. 

Fisfiiruj,  monopoly  of  granted  to  rompnny  of  Hundred  Associates.  208;  catch  of 
1646.  324  ;  rights  conferred  on  Charles  de  Lauzon,  334  ;  encouraged  by  govern- 
ment, 385. 

Five  Nations.     See  Iroquois. 

/70iF.  included  in  the  Edict  on  Tithes.  500. 

Fletcher,  Benjamin,  Governor  of  New  Yorl<.  asked  to  prevent  sale  of  liquor.  450 
note. 

"  Flibot,"  vessel  in  Kirke's  fleet,  193. 

Florida.  Iroquois  tribes  in.  56  ;  Huguenot  colony  In,  68,  112  ;  boundary  limit  of 
cession  to  Hundred  Associates,  208. 

Flour,  scarcity  of,  357  :  exportation  of.  385. 

Foligno,  Paulct  dc,  Franciscan,  116. 

Forest, ,  seminarist,  arrives  at  Quebec,  466. 

Forestirr,  .Intoine,  conreur  de  bins,  text  of  contract,    536-538. 

Fort  Alhany  (.Tames  Bay),  held  by  Hudson  Bay  Company,  517  ;  .Toilet  sent  to.  518. 

Fort  Bourbon,  capture  of  by  French.  521  ;  offered  by  Louis  XIV.  to  Compagnie  du 
Nord,  532-534  ;  Compagnie  du  Nord  beg  king  to  retain  it  during  war,  535. 

Fort  Cataraqui.     See  Fort  Frontenac. 

Fort  Charles,  built  by  English,  516. 

Fort  Frontenac  (Cataraqui).  abandoned.  395;  scandal  concerning.  455;  seized  by 
La  Salle's  creditors,  508;  first  in  chain  of  posts  to  surround  English,  526. 

Fort  Moose,  English  trading  post.  517. 

Fort  I^'ussau.  Iroquois  trade  at.  24(). 

Fort  Nelson,  to  be  neutral  trading  post.  523;  aid  sought  by  French  against  Eng- 
lisli  near,  529. 

Fort  Orange  (afterward  .Albany),  clothing  obtained  for  French  captives  at.  266. 

Fort  Richelieu,  building  of,  274;  Montmagny  seeks  Iroquois  at,  276;  site  of,  280; 
Jogues  at,  285  ;  garrison  withdrawn,  285,  288  298  ;  burned  by  Iroquois,  288  : 
neglect  of,  315. 

Fort  Rupert.  English  trading  post.  517.. 

Fort  St.  Lovis,  erected  by  Champlain.  140.  145;  armament  for,  140,  151-152.  196- 
197,  216-217;  site  of,  145,  5t!0.  500  note;  fortified.  148;  neglect  of.  175.  177; 
enlarged,  177;  towers  fall.  182-183,  191;  summoned  by  English.  193-194; 
Kirke  takes  possession  of,  196  ;  English  colors  raised.  197  ;  garrison  deported. 
198;  returned  to  French.  213;  described  by  English,  217:  strengthene<l  by 
Montmagny,  246.  327;  Gagnon's  L<;  fort  et  le  chateau  Saint  Louts,  501  rtote. 
Sec  also  (^hriteau  St.  Louis.  Habitation  de  Quebec. 

Fort  Sorel.  Richelieu  on  site  of,  280. 

Foueher, .  in  charge  of  cattle  farm.  177  ;  escapes  English,  183,  184. 

Fournicr, ,  French  ship  captain,  pursues  Irocpiols.  246. 

Fournicr.  Afme.  Jacques.  burles(|ue  petition  of.   .374  note. 

France,  early  colonizer  of  America,  13-14.  .s3  ;  famous  voyage  Instituted  by,  15; 
state  of  at  period  of  discovery  of  America.  15;  lack  of  navy,  15;  colonial 
policy,  16-17,  137-139.  524.  526-527:  effect  of  wars  of  on  American  colonies. 
17;  rivalry  with  Spain,  40;  absolutism,  63;  first  to  trade  with  Levant.  67: 
first  colonizer  through  corporate  co-operation.  67-68:  Canadl.nn  policy  of  Inl 
tiated  by  Champlain,  91  ;  rights  of  citizenship,  209,  377  ;  unable  to  aid  Can- 


5&0:  INDEX. 

adn,  276  ;  makes  uo  provision  for  colonial  troops,  284  ;  conversion  of  Indians 
prinu'  object  of.  205  ;  expansion  of,  3.S8  ;  issues  medal  to  commemorate  Cana- 
^'■'''  dlan  victory,  208:  estal)lishes  peace  with  England,  300;  controversy  with 
Rome  over  bishopric  of  Canada.  436 ;  abolishes  order  of  Jesuits,  476 ;  data  in 
colonial  office,  505 

France  Prhnc,  name  jjiven  to  Canada,  47. 

FruncJieviUc,  Pierre  dc,  priest,  seeks  relief  for  clergy,  447-448;  at  Jesuit  college, 
471. 

Frail  die  Vomtt,  annexed  to  Prance,  15. 

Francis  I.  of  France,  relations  with  Charles  V.,  16,  40,  107;  claims  share  of  Amer- 
ica, 16:  commission  to  Cartier,  24:  inconsistencies  of,  33,  71;  inscription  to. 
38  ;  dedication  to,  30  ;  appoints  de  Roberval,  41  ;  commissions  Cartier,  41-42  ; 
commercial  spirit,  65;  colonial  system  of,  81-138. 

Franciscans,  established  at  Quebec,  111,  115;  compared  to  Dominicans,  112-113; 
sub-orders,  114-117;  hampered  by  poverty,  17<i-171;  forbidden  to  hold  real 
estate.  171  ;  narrow  views  of.  174  ;  in  California.  264.  See  also  St.  Francis 
d'Assisi,  Recollets. 

Franl;lin,  licnjaniin,  schemes  of  federation  distrusted.  525. 

Franqiu'lin,  Jean  liaptiste,  royal  engineer,  plan  of  Queliec,  481. 

French,  fishermen,  follow  explorers.  10 ;  Iroquois  hatred  of.  38 ;  relations  with 
Hurons,  58.  00-02  ;  success  with  Indians,  03  :  to  be  expelled  from  Canada,  211 
note:  averse  to  emigration.  238;  rights  secured  by  Quebec  Act,  440. 

French  Rirer,  Huron  line  of  flight,  61. 

Freres  donnes,  obligations  of,  4C>3  note. 

Frb'es  M incurs  f Minor  Brothers,  Minorites,  Brethren  of  the  more  Strict  observ- 
ance, Observantists).     >S'ce  Franciscans. 

Fripons,  term  applied  by  Lalemant.  325. 

Frohisher .  Sir  Martin,  0. 

Frontena<',  Anne  de  la  Oraiuje  Trianon  de,  Comtesse  de,  sketch  of.  405. 

Frontenac,  Louis  de  Buade,  Comte  de,  Governor  of  Canada  (1672-1682,  1689- 
1608)  ;  i)urial  place  of,  242,  356  ;  compared  to  Montinagny,  205,  206  ;  quar- 
rels with  Inteudant,  375;  convokes  assembly,  375;  urges  building  of  forge, 
385  ;  encourages  expansion,  300  ;  appointed  Covernor  of  Canada,  303,  436  ; 
character  and  administration,  303-305.  436-437.  454-456;  recalled.  304,  305. 
458-450,  507  :  reappointed.  306,  450.  501  :  at  Montreal.  306  ;  defends  Quebec, 
306.  307,  308-300  ;  reception  of  English  envoy.  307  ;  reward  of.  308-300  ;  death 
of,  300,  400  ;  scheme  to  isolate  English  colonies,  384,  300.  526  :  angers  Jesuits 
by  proposing  to  give  Tartnffe,  402-405  ;  authorizes  brandy  traffic,  452  ;  belief 
in  education  for  Indians,  465  ;  rebuilds  ch.Tteau  and  fort,  502  ;  builds  fortifica- 
tions, 503-504  ;  colonial  policy  of,  526  ;  dispatch  of  Louis  XIV.  to,  533,  534. 

Fiir  trade,  Tadousac  center  of  in  1608,  51,  70;  colonizing  conditional  to  monopoly 
of.  68  :  Cartier's  privileges.  60  ;  Lescarbot  cited  on.  60  ;  Chauvin's  monopoly, 
70  ;  post  established  at  Tadousac,  70  ;  De  Chast's  monopoly,  71-72  ;  De  Monts' 
■  monopoly,  73;  Basque  fishers  assert  rights  in.  78;  post  established  at  Quebec, 
78  ;  inducements  of.  70  ;  La  Roche's  monopoly,  70  ;  Dp  Monts"  concession,  82- 
83;  profits  of,  174;  pivot  of  mission  work,  174;  in  1625.  174-175:  wages  of 
employes,  175.  175  note,  521  note,  537-538  ;  prices  of  skins,  216 ;  Kirke's  cargo, 
218  ;  English  rivalry.  220 ;  paralyzed  by  Iroquois.  268,  276,  202-203 ;  occa- 
sional activity.  300.  320-330.  351.  356.  368:  New  England  a  better  market 
than  I^rance.  304;  of  1648.  328;  Lauzon's  policy  of  expansion,  343;  regu- 
lated Iiy  Council.  374  :  expansion  of,  300  ;  inimical  policy  of  Iroquois.  508  ; 
IMackenzie's  report,  522-523:  Henry  cited,  523  note;  adverse  to  colonization, 
524  note :  employs  forbidden  individual  traffic,  537.  See  also  Commercial 
Companies.   Liquor  traffic.  Trade. 

Oahouri/.  Lotiif!.  punishment  of,  374  note. 


INDEX. 


561 


Gahriel  (Gihraire) ,  a  Frenchman,  slain  by  Iroquois,  97-98. 

Oaijnon.  Ernrnt.  Fort  ct  Chiitcau  St.  Loim.  501  note. 

GaillarJ,  OuiUaitiiir^  witness,  536. 

Oaillon.  Michel,  execution  of.  47-48. 

Oalifjai,  Etienne,  mentioned,  124. 

Oalitjai.  Leonora,  Marechale  d'Ancre,  execution  of,  12.3;  relations  with  Ulclielleu, 
202. 

Oalincr.  Rene  de  lirehant  ile,  Sulpician,  explores  Lake  Erie.  .390. 

OalHeanism,  opposed  by  .Jesuits,  417.  41S;  favored  by  Talon,  4:{3  ;  Canacllaii 
Church  freed  from,  4.S6.     See  alxo  Roman  Catholic  Church. 

Gamaehe,  \Ucolas-  Rohcitit,  Marquis  de.  gift  to  .Jesuits,  253. 

Gamaehr,  Rene  Rohav.lt  de,  gift  to  .Jesuits,  25."},  409. 

"  Oargon,"  Boston  ship,  518. 

Garemand,  Mme.  Pierre,  killed  by  Iroquois,  .S55. 

Garnier,  Charles,  .Jesuit,  death  of,  .301. 

Gamier.  Johan,  purchases  arms  for  New  France,  70. 

Garreau,  Leonard,  .Jesuit,  death  of,  ,344. 

Ga.<<pe.  I'liilippe,  Auhert  de,  Aneicns  Canadiens  cited.  49,3;  Memoirs  cited,  498-499. 

Gax/ie  (district  on  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence),  trade  monopoly  of  granted  De  Monts, 
82;  boundary  of  de  Caen's  monopoly,  141,  173;  I'ontgrave"s  .iourney  from. 
179.  190  ;  de  Roqucmonf  s  fleet  at.  185  ;  salt  sought  at,  189  ;  building.s  burned 
at.  191  ;  Quebec  fugitives  land  at,  191  ;  "  Le  Coquin  "  captured  near,  195. 

Gaspe  Basin,  early  site,  23;  Yan  lauds  corn  at.  309;  silver  at,  380. 

Gaudais,  Louis.  French  coramissionor,  dismisses  actions  against  officials,  372. 

Gaudar,  Mme.  seignory  of  Gaudarville,  named  for,  334. 

Gaufestre,  Jean,  .Jesuit  brother,  sails  for  Canada,  174. 

Gauffon   (Goffre,  La  Gaiiffre),  ,  nominated  for  l)isliop,  413. 

Gauthier, ,  robbed  by  Iroquois,  349. 

Oauthier,  Philippe,  Sieur  de  Comporte.  dele.gate  of  Compagnie  de  la  Baye  d'llud- 
son,  519,  529,  530;  in  process  against  Gitton,  530,  531. 

General  Hospital  (li'IIopital  Gtoeral  de  Quebec),  site  of.  143,  443;  founded  by 
St.  Vallier.  14.3.  443;  St.  Valuer's  plan  of  establishing,  disapproved,  460,  489; 
value  of,  4S9. 

Genessee  Rirer.  Iroquois  occupy  valley  of,  56,  275. 

Gentlemen  Adventurers,  with  Cartier.  31;  with  Roberval.  65. 

Georpes, ,  Rochelle  merchant,  turns  back  free  traders,  110. 

Georgian  Hay,  migration  of  Ilurons  to,  55,  58,  61,  62;  home  of  Hnrons,  56;  Cham- 
plain  determines  to  explore,  96;  Le  CaroB  on,  120;  Frenchmen  refuse  to 
return  from.  105-100;  Recoliets  set  out  for.  184;  epidemic  among  Indians  at, 
247;  beauties  of,  247;  Iroquois  route  to,  275;  intercourse  cut  off,  277;  s;nall 
allowance  for  missions  on,  287  ;  Chastillon's  embassy  to,  293  ;  tragedy  of,  290, 
299,   302,  329. 

Germain,  Charles,  Recollet,  sets  out  for  Georgian  Hay.  184  ;  returns  to  Quebec,  184. 

Germany,  punishment  of  witchcraft  in,  425. 

Gibbons,  Edward.  Major  of  Boston  militia,  enterliiins  Druillettes,  300,  30s  ;  friend- 
ship for  La  Tour.  300-307  iwte ;  introduces  Druillettes,  307;  doubtful  of 
alliance  with  French.  308. 

Giffard,  Marie  Louise,  marriage  of,  334. 

Oiifard,  Robert,  Sieur  de  Beauport,  hunting  cal)in  of,  180.  235;  arrival  in  Canada, 
233,  235  ;  first  seigneur  of  Canada,  235  ;  sketch  of,  235  ;  seignory  of,  235-230, 
318,  323;  does  homage.  23S  ;  at  (.}uel)ec.  238-239;  pursues  Iroquois.  246; 
colonizer,  264;  delegate  to  France,  287;  member  of  council,  299.  310;  gift  to 
Jesuits,  319  ;  in  Corpus  Christi  procession,  321  ;  daughtei'  married,  334 ;  serv- 
ants drowned,  33S. 

Oiffard's  River,  .Tesuit  lands  on,  324, 


562  INDEX. 

Oilbert,  Sir  Humphrey,  inaugurator  of  English  slave  trade,  67  note. 

Qillam,  Benjamin,  capture  and  release  of.  518. 

Oillam,  Zuchary,  sails  sliip  to  Hudson  Bay.  510. 

Oitton,  Jeini  fits,  rcrstis  tlic  Coinpagnie  de  la  Baye  d'Hudson,  531-532. 

Olimi)i'<s  of  the  Monastery,  2.S2. 

Ooa,  Hindustan,  influence  of  .Tesuit  college  at,  478. 

Oobin,  Jean,  member  of  Compagnie  du  Nord,  534,  5.S5.  536. 

OoiUfroy,  Jean  Baptiste,  Sieur  de  Linctot,  fur  trader,  160. 

Oodefroy,  Jean  Paul,  interpreter,  100;  deputy  to  France.  279;  member  of  council, 
290;  envoy  to  New  England.  .SIO.  311. 

Oodefroy,  Thomas.  Sieur  dt  Normanville,  interpreter,  109  ;  Iroquois  capture  and 
return,  2(i0-207. 

Odd,  fabulous,  37  ;  ("artier's,  44,  45,  47,  324  ;  Champlain  commissioned  to  seek, 
173;  discovered.  324. 

Oolf  des  Chateaux,  early  name  of  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence,  20. 

Gonzayue,  ]j0uis  de,  patron  of  Recollets,  116. 

Goroes,  Sir  Fernando,  colony  of.  156. 

OosseUn,  Abhe  Anguste  H.,  cited,  417;  Life  of  Laval,  411  note,  419  note;  St.  Val- 
uer, 406  note. 

OosseUn.  E..  Marine  Normande,  cited.  60-70. 

Oouel.  Robert,  sells  tools  for  New  France.  70. 

Grand  Allee,  length  of.  201  ;  hoands  beaten,  328:  in  1716.  495  note. 

"  Grande  Hermine,"  Cartier's  ship,  dimensions  of,  25. 

Grande  Maisem,  Eleanore  de,  Hurons  settled  on  lands  bought  from.  338. 

Orandmont  (Grand.  Oant.  Gand,  Gan).  Francois  de  R(',  Sieur  de,  burial  place  of, 
242  :  transfers  Sillery  to  .Jesuits,  254.  323. 

Grapes,  vines  planted  at  Quebec.  89. 

Great  BanJcs.     See  Newfoundland. 

Great  Rritain,  obligations  of  under  treaty  of  St.  Germain,  221-222.  See  alio  Eng- 
land. 

Great  Lairs.     See  r>akes.  Great. 

Great  River.     See  St.  Lawrence. 

Greek,  sent  to  reconnoiter  English,  183. 

Green  Bay,  \yis.,  Marquette  and  .Toliet  on,  390. 

Oreslon.  Adrieti,  .Tesuit,  leaves  Three  Rivers,  300. 

Grey  Nuns.     See  Hospital  Nuns. 

Grondines.  ceded  to  IIAtel  Dieti^  265. 

Orosse  Island,  free  traders  at,  162. 

Oroseilleyft.  Jean  lio/tiiste,  captured,  519. 

GroseilUers.  Medard  Choiiart,  Sieur  des,  brings  down  cargo  of  fars.  356;  takes 
Jesuits  to  Lake  Superior,  356  ;  connection  with  Radisson,  515  ;  desires  to  open 
Hudson  Bay  region.  515;  fined  in  Canada.  51(5;  interests  Boston.  516;  sails 
with  English  commissioners.  516;  patronized  by  Prince  Rupert,  516;  pardoned 
and  employed  by  French,  518:  parts  from  Radisson.  519. 

Growte,  Moses,  letter  of  Noel  to,  51. 

Ouercheville,  Antoinette  de  Pons.  Marquise  de.  refuses  to  aid  de  Monts,  77;  ad- 
vised by  Champlain,  91  ;  refuses  to  aid  Champlain,  95  ;  influenced  by  .Tesuits, 
111  ;  sends  .Jesuits  to  New  l<''rance,  171. 

Overs.  Baptiste.  royal  commissioner,  reads  Champlain's  commission.  141.  145: 
sent  to  watch  rival  traders.  145.  146;  causes  dissension  in  Quebec,  147;  helps 
to  guard  habitation    148;  draws  up  petition  to  the  King,  153. 

Ouesnier,  Francois  Bertin,  Jesuit,  teaches  in  Jesuit  college,  470. 

Ouibault,  ReeoUet  frere  donne,  wife  of,  in  monastery,  464. 

Ouillemot  Guillatime.     See  Duplessis-Bochart. 

9uinecourt,  ,  dispatched  to  France  for  provisions,  47. 


INDKX. 


563 


Guints,  Modcste,  RecoUet,  arrives  in  Canada,  li27;  meets  Champlain,  130. 

Oustavvs  II.  (Adolphu8)  of  Sweden,  allianct"  with  Richelieu,  220. 

Guyart   {Gutjard).  Marie  dc.     Sec  I/Incaruation,  Marie  de. 

Guyot,  Charles,  servant  to  Cartier,  38. 

HabHants,  designation  of  Frencli  farmers  and  settlers,  first  to  succeed  In 
farming,  178 ;  type  of  houses  of,  254 ;  dissatisfied  with  local  government. 
27P-2S0  :  permitted  to  barter  with  Indians,  ::8!) ;  in  the  militia,  391  ;  protest 
against  tithes,  445,  44(i.  447  :  affected  by  brandy  question,  450  ;  independence 
of,  490-491  ;  status  and  customs  of,  5118-511.     Hcc  also  Company  of  llabitiuit.s 

Habitation  de  Quebec,  location,  78.  H«)-S7,  117;  building,  78,  80;  description,  88- 
89,  103;  repairs,  101  ;  expense  of  maintenance,  101;  De  Monts  negotiates  for, 
102;  occupants  of,  103,  119,  101,  198,  216;  Champlain  at,  117,  118,  130,  148; 
enlarged,  120,  122,  131-135;  council  held  at,  128-129;  peril  of,  13ti;  ruinous 
state  of,  141.  161.  165;  neglected  for  church  buildings,  142,  174;  renovations, 
145,  164,  165,  166,  175;  company  of  De  Caen  demands  possession,  148;  to  be 
supported  by  commercial  companies,  149,  151  ;  winter  in,  163 ;  tiuding  of 
foundation  stone,  165,  500;  fortified  to  resist  English.  184;  summoned  by 
English,  193-194;  keys  delivered  to  English,  195;  Kirke  takes  possession, 
197,  198,  223  ;  burned  by  English,  222.  See  also  Chateau  St.  Louis,  Fort  St. 
Louis. 

Habitat ion-'i  (posts),  number  of  priests  assigned  to,  208.  tSec  also  Quebec,  Ilabita 
tion  de  la. 

Hache,  Robert,  .Tesiiit  donne,  delegate  to  France,  287;  New  Year's  gift  to,  319; 
assigned  to  fisheries,  321. 

Hakluyt,  Richard,  translator  of  Cartier  and  Roberval,  41  ;  letters  preserved  by, 
68  ;  Voyages,  sole  authority  for  early  French  colonization  of  Canada,  49. 

Halard.  Isaac,  delivers  arms  and  ammunition  to  Champlain,  152. 

Haldimand,  Sir  Frederic,  Governor  of  Canada,  new  chateau  begun  by.  501. 

Hale,  Barbe,  victim  of  witclicraft,  425. 

Hale,  Horatio,  mentioned,  53. 

Hamel,  Joseph,  finds  remains  of  Cartier's  ship,  26. 

Hamel,  Mpr.  Thomas  E.,  "  Laval  University  "  cited,  484  note. 

"Happy  Return,"  ship  of  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  519. 

Harfleur,  France,  cod  fishing  industry  of,  69-70  ;  Champlain  sails  for,  73. 

Harvard,  John,  cited,  462. 

Harvard  University,  founded,  462. 

Harvey,  ,  associate  in  Company  of  De  Caen.  206. 

Havre,  France,  cod  fishing  industry  of,  69-70. 

Hats,  effect  of  fashions  in  on  fur  trade,  522  ;  Huguenot  makers  of,  driven  from 
France,  523. 

Haivaii,  rights  of  natives  ignored,  7. 

Haukins,  Alfred,  Picturesque  Quebec,  55  note. 

Haseur,  Ffon^ois.  house  of,  510  ;  in  process  against  Gitton,  531  ;  member  of  Com- 
pagnie  du  Nord,  534,  535.  536. 

Hibert,  in  charge  of  de  Caen's  ship,  162-16,S.. 

Hebert,  Anne,  marriage  of.  125,    142;  death  of,  142. 

Hebert,  Guillaume,  house  of.  141. 

Hebert,  Guillemette.     See  Couillard,  Mme.  Guillaume. 

Hebert,  Loins,  Sieur  de  TEspinay.  saiLs  with  family  for  Canada.  125;  oppressed 
by  monopolists,  125  ;  real  estate  dealings  with  Recollets,  142  ;  signs  petition 
to  king,  153;  royal  procurator,  153,  154;  house  of,  161,  165;  successful 
farmer,  169.  178:  death  and  burial,  178;  produce  of  farm,  187;  family  of 
remains  in  Quebec  during  English  occupation,  198;  mentioned,  200;  site  of 
farm,  223 ;  tenure  of  land.  235. 

Hubert,  Mme,  Louis  (nee  Marie  Rollet),  tends  dying  Scotchman,  132-133;  servant 


§64  INDEX. 

murdered,  180,  235 ;  marries  Hubon,  188-189 ;  in  Quebec  during  Eng.ish  oc- 
cupation, 223. 

Helie,  ,  Recollet,  breaks  vow  of  poverty,  115. 

Hennepin,  Louis,  Recollet.  events  of  Quebec,  119;  hla  voyage  to  Canada,  ?89 ; 
antagonism  to  La  Salle,  389. 

Henri,  ,  servant  to  Mme.  Hebert.  murdered  by  Indians.  180-181,  235. 

Henricians,  religious  orders  organized  against,  114. 

Heniieita  Mnric,  queen  consort  of  En-j;laud.  payment  of  dower  made  conditional 
to  restoration  of  French  territory,  214-215. 

Henry  (The  Navigator).  Prince  of  Portugal.  T:  founds  commercial  company,  67. 

Henry  HI.  of  France,  cause  of  assassination  of,  64;  stipulation  to  monopoly 
granted  by,  68 ;  colonizing  system  of,  81 ;  political  changes  during  reign  of, 
201. 

Henry  IV.  (The  Great)  of  France,  reasons  for  renouncing  Protestantism,  64,  201  ; 
concession  to  La  Roche,  68,  79-80  ;  fails  to  associate  Catholics  and  Huguenots, 
74  ;  colonizing  system  of.  81.  154  ;  concession  to  De  Monts.  81.  82,  83.  94,  05  ; 
presented  with  Indian  girdle.  95  ;  free  trade  policy  of,  95  ;  desires  conversion 
of  savages.  107:  death  of.  checks  Huguenot  colonization,  107,  112. 

Henry  VIII.  of  England,  as  leader  of  reform.  64. 

Henry,  Alexander,  Tracels  and  Adventures  cited,  523  noie. 

Hermitage  at  Caen,  sketch  of.  411-412;  mentioned,  428;  Influence  on  Seminary 
of  Quebec,  480. 

Hertel,  Jacques,  early  colonist.  169. 

Hibbins.  M'iUiam.  Boston  magistrate,  favors  Druillettes,  308. 

Hochalai,  Indian  town,  location  of,  34,  43  ;  chief  friendly  to  Cartier,  44  ;  chief 
conspires  against  Cartier,  45. 

Hoehclaga,  Indian  town  on  present  site  of  Montreal.  European  plants  found  at, 
20  ;  believed  to  be  a  part  of  Asia,  24  ;  the  goal  of  Cartier,  27  ;  Indians  oppose 
Cartier's  quest  of,  28,  56  ;  Cartier  enters,  31  ;  names  heights  of  Montreal,  31  ; 
Indians  of  Huron  stock,  33.  50 ;  limit  of  Cartier's  explorations.  51,  72; 
relations  with  Stadaeona,  52-53,  60  ;  language  of,  52-54  ;  Cartier's  description 
of,  confirmed.  54  ;  disappearance  of.  54,  72  ;  changes  found  by  Cha-nplain,  54 : 
destroyed  by  Mohawk  confederacy,  58,  61.  See  also  Hurons,  Iroquois.  Mont- 
real. 

Hocquart,  OiUes,  Intendant  of  New  France  (1728-1748),  461;  removes  restriction 
on  tobacco,  509. 

Hoganchenda,  Indian  town,  chief  of,  warns  Cartier.  34. 

Holland,  influence  of  wars  of,  on  American  colonies,  17 ;  colonizing  schemes  in 
North  America,  84.  155:  colonial  policy  of.  154-155;  a  spur  to  French  col- 
onization, 205 ;  encourages  Huguenots.  206.  See  also  Commercial  Compa- 
nies. 

Holy  Family,  confraternity  of.  in  Canada,  403  note. 

Honfeur,  Franci .  Roberval  at.  42  :  De  Monts  fits  vessels  at.  77  :  Champlain  and 
Pontgrav^  sail  from  n6]0),  95;  Champlain  and  Recollets  sail  from  fl615), 
112;  Champlain  at  (1618).  132;  Champlain  and  family  sail  from  (1620), 
140. 

Honguedo,  Indian  town,  chief  of.  trusts  sons  to  Cartier.  22-23. 

Hooker,  Thomas,  victim  of  religious  intolerance.  76. 

Hope,  one  of  three  Indian  girls  left  with  Champlain,  181  :  gathering  roots,  192; 
included  in  Champlain's  stipulations,  194;  Champlain's  affection  for.  195; 
left  with  Mme.  Couillard,  195. 

Horses,  first  imported  into  Canada.  i!91.  326.  380;  rapid  propagation  of.  291; 
scarcity  of.  380.  507  ;  hardiness  of.  509  ;  manner  of  driving.  509. 

H6tel-Dieu,  endowment  fund,  257  ;  land  granted  for,  257,  265,  494  :  nurses  for, 
257-?-58 ;  establishes  branch  at  Sillery,  269;    chapel  used  as  parish  church, 


INDEX.  565 

269 ;   Sillery  nuns  take  refuge  in,   282 ;   sheltei-s   Huron   refugees.   3i>2-3()3 ; 
chapel   dedicated.   320;   age  of.   822:   site   of.  322.   494.   497,   -iVti;   L)e   Mfz.v 
buried  in  cemetery,  3r>() ;  inmates  of,  404  :  destruction  of,  498. 
Hospital  Nvns    (Hospitalers.   Hospitallers,    Orey    Nuns,    Nuns   of   St.    Augustine*, 
devotion  of,  250,  263.  282-283,  408:  order  and  foundation  of,  2."j7-2.'58  ;  sail 
for  New  France.  261:  at  Quebec.  261,  263-264,  269.  282;  at  Sillery,  261-262, 
260;  temporary  house  of,  262.  4(t7  ;  costume,  262  note:  terrified  by  Iroquois, 
282;  clear  land,  282;  tenure  of  land,  318,  323;  friendly  rivalries.  310;  claim 
precedence  of   Ursulines.  322  ;   chnpiain  of.  407  :   alienated  by   Saint   Vallier, 
489  ;  location  and  development  ot  lauds.  494,  4!)5.     t>te  also  Uotel-Dleu. 
Hospitals.     See  General  Hospital.  HtMel-Uieu.  Marine  Hospital. 
Hot,  Louis,  coureur  de  bois,  text  of  contract,  536-538. 
Houel,  Louis,  secretary  of  the  king,  aids  Champlain  to  establish  Recolleta,  111  : 

aids  Rfccollets.  144;  one  of  Hundred  Associates,  207. 
Hubon,  Ouillaumc,  marries  v.'idow  of  Ilebert.  188. 
Hiihon,  Mtne  ,  Euijlish  respect  property  of,  195,  198. 

Huilson  Bay,  96 ;  likeness  between  trading  posts  of,  and  early  Quebec.  103 ;  re- 
ported to  have  been  seen  by  Vignau,  109  ;  importance  of.  391 ;  La  I'othcrie 
on  expedition  to.  4112  note;  Jesuits  detailed  to  watch  English  at,  516-517  ;  war 
for  possession  of,  519-520  ;  retained  by  Uritish.  See  also  Commercial  Com- 
panies. 
Hudson  Riier,  Iroquois  boundary,  56:  Dutch  colony  on.  84,  136,  155,  245;  claimed 

by  Englisli,  84  ;  Canadians  forbidden  to  travel  to,  492. 
Huet,  Paul,  Kecollet.  journey  to  New  France,  125 ;  insists  on  surrender  of  mur- 
derers,  129;  mission  to  France.   132,   141-142;   angered  at   Pontgrav6,   150; 
takes  Indian  boy   (Amautacha)   to  France,  176. 
Hufjuenots.  colonization  schemes  of,  68,  106,  112:  excluded  from  Canada,  75,  112. 
113.  160,  200,  204,  277,  381;  form  of  worship  unattractive  to  Indians,  107  ; 
predominate  in  early  commercial  companies,  111,  Hi,  122.  123:  critical  posi- 
tion of,   123;  on  verge  of  revolt,   127;   cause  jeopardized  by   English  repub- 
licanism, 137;  grievances  of  priests  against.  124,  170,  177,  198,  199;  refuse 
to  shelter  Jesuits.  172:  illiberality  of.  199;  opposed  to  absolutism,  2n2  ;  clem- 
ency of  Richelieu,   202.   203,   207;   crushed   by   Richelieu,   203;   rising  of,   In 
France,  206;  aided  by  English,  210-211,  212;  wanderings  of,  381. 
Huqnet,  Pierre,  witness,  538. 
Hundred  Years'  War.     See  Iroauois  War. 

Huroiis,  linguistic  affinity  with  Iroquois,  54-55;  Champlain's  visit  to  towns  of,  54  ; 
migration  to  Georgian  Bay,  55,  58,  60,  61,  62;  earliest  home  of,  56;  cause  of 
Iroquois  hostility  to,  57  ;  influence  of  wars  of,  on  history  of  New  France,  58, 
90  91,  233;  hostility  to  Senecas,  59;  Champlain's  alliance  with,  59,  60.  62,  90. 
91-93,  94,  95,  96,  97-9S,  lOO-lOl  ;  distrust  Champlain,  109;  adopt  Brule.  131  ; 
Champlain  attempts  to  reconcile  with  Iroquois.  161  ;  Frenchmen  remaiu  with, 
165-160;  pursued  by  Iroquois.  106;  at  Quebec,  191-192,  22S.  240.  299.  3(i2- 
303,  338.  352,  368,  498  :  alTection  for  French.  229  ;  intermarriage  with  French 
advocated.  229,  240;  excuse  for  sh.^ring  trade  with  English.  229;  price  of 
conversion,  231.  295;  war  with  Iroquois.  232,  233,  245.  246,  265.  267;  alli- 
ance with  French,  233,  268,  295;  Champlain's  exhortation  to,  240;  at  Three 
Rivers,  245.  246.  247,  265,  300  ;  epidemic  among,  247,  255  ;  effect  of  Jesuit 
teaching  on.  250-251.  301-302:  dislike  of  sedentary  life.  254-255.  407-468; 
irritated  at  French  255;  ^tioulmagny  sends  embassy  to.  255:  represented  at 
fete  of  Dauphin,  263;  captured  by  Iroquois,  267,  275.  312,  345;  open  Iluronia 
to  Iroquois,  275-276;  converts.  277,  279;  Jesuit  protection  of  resented  b.v 
colonists.  279;  Jesuits  with,  282;  capture  Iroquois.  283:  in  couucil,  2.S3.  350; 
destruction  of,  293,  296.  299,  320,  330  :  fighting  strength  of,  290 ;  a."  refugees 


S66  INDEX. 

302,  338,  342,  345,  352,  308,  408 :  Bear  family  join  Mohawks,  345-346 ;  alli- 
ance sought  by  Iroouois,  347.     Sec  also  Fur  trade.  Jesuits,  Recollets. 

Hulchiiison,  Thomas,  History  of  the  Colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  311. 

Hythloduy,  Raphael.  12. 

Iberville,  I'ierre  le  Moyne,  Sieur  d",  captures  St  John's,  391 ;  expedition  against 
Hudson  Bay.  520,  521. 

Iceland,  boundary  of  fishing  grounds,   10. 

Illinois,  Algonquin  tribe,  country  of.  explored  by  La  Salle,  390,  395 ;  allies  oi 
French,  395. 

India,  opening  of  sea  trade  to,  7 :  success  of  Franciscans  in.  170. 

Indians,  rights  of,  disregarded,  7  :  sedentary  tribes  prepared  for  advent  of  white 
men,  20  ;  captives  of  French,  22-23,  38,  39,  40,  42  ;  alliances  and  wars  of.  in 
St.  Lawrence  valley,  51-62;  language.  52-54  •  oral  tradition  among.  60;  rela- 
tions with  Korth  American  settlers  affected  by  French  alliance  with  Hurons, 
90,  93-94;  shrewd  traders,  90:  first  missionaries  among,  116;  citizens  of 
France.  209,  377;  more  impressed  by  Catholic  than  Protestant  forms.  107, 
248-249,  249  note,  307  note;  in  French  ceremonies,  263;  intermarriages  with 
French  encouraged,  264  :  susceptibility  to  religions  excitement.  340-341  ;  ob- 
ject to  instruction,  467-46S  ;  secretiveness  of.  515.  ^rr  also  Fur  trade,  Hoche- 
laga,  Jesuits,  Liquor  traffic.  Recollets,  Stadacona.  also  various  tribes. 

Inquisition,  in  New  Spain.  17  :  brief  rule  in  France,  113. 

Intnidants,  duties  of,  506-507. 

/renee,  ,  Capuchin,  goes  to  France  to  complain  of  Huguenots,  169. 

Iroquois,  name  covering  a  confederation  of  five  (later,  six)  tribes  of  Huron-Tro- 
quois  stock,  hatred  against  French,  38  :  in  St.  Lawrence  valley,  53,  54,  56 , 
language,  53:  migrations.  54-55.  56;  quarrel  with  Algonquins,  54,  59  note; 
feud  with  Hnrons,  56,  57.  61  :  formation  of  confederacy.  57  :  growth  and  pol- 
icy of  confederacy.  57-62,  267-268;  intercourse  with  Dutch,  84-85,  93.  177, 
266,  267-268.  275  :  French  war  on.  90,  91.  92-93.  97-98  ;  seek  alliance  with 
English.  93;  trade  with  English.  99;  Champlain  attempts  to  conciliate,  162; 
attack  Recollet  monastery,  166-167;  defeat  of.  179;  terrorize  Quebec,  180, 
266.  275.  288.  .SOI,  326.  331.  .343;  hostility  of.  advances  trading  posts,  245; 
capture  Hurons,  245,  275-276 ;  terrorize  Sillery,  254,  275,  292 ;  check 
civilization,  264;  check  fur  trade,  265.  276.  279.  356.  395;  capture  French- 
men. 266.  276  ;  desire  alliance  with  French,  266-267  ;  terrorize  Montreal,  272. 
274.  336.  337.  347.  364:  threaten  Fort  Richelieu.  276;  devastate  Canada. 
276-277  :  torture  priests.  282  ;  captured  by  Hurons,  283  ;  in  council,  283  ;  kill 
Jogues  and  La  Lnnde.  2S5  ;  burn  Fort  Richelieu.  288  ;  captive,  baptized.  292  ; 
French  seek  alliance  with  New  England  against.  299,  305,  309,  311;  de- 
feated at  Three  Rivers.  300;  campaign  of  extermination,  300.  301,  305,  335- 
338,  342-344.  347.  350.  357.  362,  364-365  ;  form  a  buffer  state  between  French 
and  English.  312;  captured  by  French.  348-349:  checked  by  Bollard,  355- 
356  ;  ciiptive.  saved  by  .Jesuits,  355-356  :  fighting  strength  of,  361  ;  Lou's  XIV. 
promises  aid  against.  363;  converts  in  Province  of  Quebec.  370  note;  De 
Tracy  sent  against.  378  ;  De  Tracy  makes  peace  with,  383  ;  awed  by  Fron- 
tenac  394  ;  campaign  of  La  Barre  against,  395  ;  reduce  Canada  to  verge  of 
ruin.  395 :  De  Conrcelle's  expedition  against.  433 ;  trading  policy  of.  508 ; 
feared  at  Hudson  Bay,  517;  Iroquoian  Lanf/tinr/es,  cited,  53;  Iroquois  Trail, 
cited,  56.     ,SVt  also  Fur  trade,  .Jesuits.  Recollets,  also  tribes  by  name. 

Iroquois  ^Var  (Hundred  years'  war),  beginning  of.  92,  247;  devastates  Canada, 
276-277,  279 :  renev,-al  of,  285,  288 :  causes,  295 ;  arrests  immigration,  297  ; 
course  of.  335-338,  .342-344. 

Isabella  of  Castile,  Queen  of  Spain,  marriasre  of,  8. 

Island  of  Jamaica,  Columbus  at,  11. 

Island  of  Orleans   (Isle  de  Bacchus),  24;  Roberval  and  Cartier  at,  49;  distance 


INDKX. 


567 


/om  Quebec.  86 ;  arrival  of  nuns  and  Jesuits  at,  61  ;  claimed  by  De  Caen, 
166;  claim  of  Castillon  to,  li64  ;  offered  for  Indian  mission,  208;  lands  of 
nuns  on,  323-324;  Hurons  take  refuge  on,  330-331,  338;  Iroquois  descend  on, 
342-343,  357,  364;  population  of.  370,  413;  need  of  priests,  413. 

Ifiland  of  Perce  (Isle  Perce),  monopoly  of  trade  granted,  82. 

Island  of  fit.  Bernard,  Desdames  to  I.-ind  signal  party  at,  185. 

Island  of  St.  Croix,  trading  post  on.  230. 

Island  of  St.  Joseph.     See  Christian  Island. 

Isle  aux  Coiidres  (Hazel  Nut  Island),  the  "  h('«:inning  of  Canada. "  24;  boundary 
of  Canada  and  Hochelaga,  34,  03. 

Isle  aux  Ritaux,  .Jesuit  title  to,  323. 

Isle  de  Baechus.     See  Island  of  Orleans. 

Isle  de  Bonaventiirc,  salt  sought  at,  189. 

Isle  de  .Testis,  .Tesuit  title  to,  323. 

Isle  Roufje,  seals  killed  at,  329. 

7.s^'  Verte,  free  traders  at.  151. 

Italian  I{(  publics,  influence  of  in  maritime  discovery,  13. 

Itulii,  invasion  of.  obscures  Cartier's  discovery,  40  ;  effect  of  Uoformatlon  In,  62. 

■Jalobert,  Marci,  captain  of  "  Petite  Ilermine,"  31  ;  sails  for  France,  44. 

Jamay,  Denis,  Recollet.  Superior  of  missions,  arrives  in  Canada.  111-112;  leaves 
Quebec  for  upper  St.  I-awrence.  117;  meets  Champlain.  118.  119;  return  to 
France,  121,  125,  142;  describes  Recollet  monastery,  142-143;  signs  petition 
to  king.   153. 

James  I.  of  England,  charters  London  Company.  156. 

James  II.  of  England,  effect  of  abdication  on  French  colonies.  396. 

James  Rirer.  first  colonists  of.  157.  158.. 

Jamestown,  Champlain  foresees  danger  fi-oni.  91  :  fn.mding  of,   157. 

Jansenism,  excluded  from  New  France,  220,  41 S. 

Jansenists,  attack  .Tesuits,  410. 

Japan   (Zcpango).  trade  with,  opened  by  I'ortugal.  7;  distance  from  Spain,  8. 

Jesuit  ColU'fje,  expensive  grounds  of,  116  ;  chapel,  231  ;  site.  253,  494,  498  ;  be- 
quest to.  253:  scale  of  building.  253,  474,  475;  gift  for  Indian  pupils,  264; 
work  begins  in,  282  ;  construction  of,  326,  330  ;  fimd  for.  331  ;  beginning  of, 
462-463  :  suppression  of.  463.  474,  476.  495  ;  succeeded  by  Lesser  Seminary 
(Petit  Seminaire).  463  ;  opening  of  (in  Quebec).  466  ;  curriculum.  466-467.  46H- 
470.476-477;  prominence  of.  4(!S  ;  exercises  at,  470-471:  buildings,  474-476; 
reasons  for  decline  of.  476  ;  educational  system  compared  with  that  of  Semi- 
nary, 477;  Laval  at.  482:  tuition  given  free,  484  note.  See  also  .Tesuits, 
Lesser  Seminary  'Petit  Seminaire).  Seminary  (Seminaire  des  Missions 
Etrangvresl. 

"  Jesuit  woods,"  site  of,  475. 

Jesuits,  inimical  to  Champlain.  Ill  ;  rise  of.  114  ;  at  Quebec.  115  ;  aided  by  wealth, 
115,  171;  supersede  RecoFIets,  117:  influence  Champlain.  135;  edit  the  nar- 
rative of  Champlain.  163:  sent  to  Canada,  170;  qualified  to  hold  real  estate, 
171;  advent  in  New  France.  171;  sail  for  Canada,  171-172;  coldly  received 
at  Quebec.  172  ;  sheltered  by  Recollets,  172  ;  spirit  and  power  of.  in  Canada. 
172-173;  charter  ship,  174.  179.  221  ;  interest  in  fur  trade.  174-175.  ISO.  278, 
279,  326,  368,  478;  gain  possession  of  Huron  boy,  176;  strained  relations 
with  De  Caen  Company,  179;  summoned  to  council  meeting.  180-181;  cap- 
tured by  Kirke.  185-186;  buildings  burned  by  Kirke.  191;  English  to  protect 
property  of.  195;  visited  by  ICii'ke.  197;  courtesy  of  Kirke  to.  199;  lands  of, 
200.  230.  253.  322-323,  478-479,  494:  chosen  by  Richelieu.  204.  207.  220; 
'osses  by  shipwreck.  221.  329;  succeed  to  i)roperty  of  Recollets.  223;  mis- 
sionary labors.  229-230.  249-251.  282;  institute  Indian  settlement.  253  254 
(see  also  Sillery)  ;  build  hospital.  257    (see  also  IIotel-Dieul  ;  then.ratic  gov- 


568 


INDEX. 


ernment.  265  ;  sheltered  by  rrsuliues,  269  ;  aid  Montreal  Association,  271  ; 
opposed  by  colonists,  27ii ;  revenues  from  Company  of  Habitants,  282,  2S6, 
287.  289;  temporary  liome,  282,  310;  troops  quartered  on,  284;  in  Council, 
289,  327  ;  political  aid  of.  296-297,  339-340,  474  ;  subject  to  arrest  in  New 
England,  3U3 ;  methods  of  conversion.  307  nute ;  characteristics,  314-315, 
408-40:1;  organization.  :'.H> ;  fast  and  feast  days.  3r.)-32i»;  liold  council.  330- 
331;  dispute  with  Queylus,  351.  413-415,  418;  shelter  nuns,  354;  ransom 
captives,  355-356  ;  difficulties  in  dealing  with  liquor  traffic,  365-366  ;  generos- 
ity to  Indians,  3«>8-369 ;  policy  of  Talon  toward,  384-385 ;  relations  with 
other  orders,  388-3.S9,  410  ;  in  western  exploration,  390 ;  parochial  priests, 
407;  expelled  from  Canada,  410;  debarred  from  bishopric,  413;  blamed  for 
perfidy  of  converts.  433-434  ;  work  as  educators.  462-471,  472-474,  484  note 
{see  also  above  Jesuit  College)  ;  order  founded.  472;  work  in  Europe,  473- 
474  ;  work  in  the  East,  473  ;  banished  from  Louisiana,  476  ;  order  abolished 
in  France,  476  ;  decline  in  Canada,  476  ;  unpopularity  due  to  wealth  of,  477- 
479. 

Journal  dcs  Jcstiites,  cited,  290,  309,  315.  341-342,  365,  413,  425.  429; 
character  of.  313-314,  492  nole:  loss  of  second  and  third  volumes,  315; 
silence  on  political  missions.  339. 

llelntlons.  object  of.  251,  314.  438;   effect  of.  in  Franco,  251.   257,  409; 

cited,  256,  202,  367;  lost  in  transmission,  277;  exaggerate  Indian  piety,  313, 

340;  origin,  314  note;  cessation  of  publication,   314  note;  injurious  results 

of.  409;  Thwaites's  edition  cited.  312,  ;^67. 

Jofjucs,  Isauc,  .lesuit.  martyrdom.  233,  285.  286,  326;  capture  of,  275;  letter  from, 

276  ;  returns  to  Mohawk  country,  285  ;  excites  fears  of  Indians,  286. 
John  XXII..  Pope,  enjoins  Spirituals,  113. 

Jolict,  Jucherean,  to  take  possession  of  River  Nemiskan,  519-520. 
Joliet,  Louis,  sent  to  Lake  Superior,  386  ;  at  Jesuit  college,  471  ;  sent  to  watch 

English  at  Fort  Albany,  518. 
Joliet,  III.,  origin  of  name.  387. 

Jonraire, ,  mission  to  France,  482-483. 

Jonquest,  EtUnnc,  marriage  of.  142. 

Jouhert,  ,  captain  of  French  ship,  returns  to  France,  221. 

Jubilee,  observance  of,  317-318.  341-342. 
Jucheri:au,  Xoel.     See  Chastelets. 
Julius  II.,  Pope,  period  of,  11-12. 

Kaltii.  I'ctcr,  Swedish  naturalist,  on  luxui'v  of  Quebec  tables,  406,  510;  on  wealth 
of  Sulpicians.  410;  admiies   Canadian  women,  465,  491;   Canadian  visit  of, 
492  note. 
Knnibas.,  Algonquin  tribe  on  Kennebec  River,  appeal  to  French.  287. 
Kehc-Kehec,  Micmac  name  for  contracted  waterway,  55  note.     Srr  nJ.so   Quebec. 
Kennchcc  River,  Catholic  missions  or,  2S8  ;  Druillettes  on.  305.  306. 
Kiefi,  M'ilhchn,  Governor  of  New  Netherlands,  unwise  policy  of,  267. 
King   James's   ^yar,   17. 
Kiiilj  William's  War^  17. 

Kirke,  Hir  David,  Admiral,  son  of  Gervais.  threatens  Quebec.  177;  seizes  beaver 
skins,  180;  raids  Cap  Tourmente,  18.3-184,  187;  demands  surrender  of  Que- 
bec, 184;  withdraws  from  Quebec  to  meet  French  fleet,  185;  captures  De 
Roqueraont,  185-186,  209.  211;  captures  "  Le  Coquin,"  191;  burned 
in  effigy.  193:  make  second  demand  for  surrender  of  Quebec,  1'.»3-1!I4: 
sends  Indian  girls  back  to  Quebec,  195:  deposition  of.  197,  211  note; 
at  Quebec.  199;  expedition  against  Quebec.  211  note,  212-214;  restores  Que- 
bec. 214,  215.  221,  528:  organizes  Company  of  Canada,  214;  losses  of,  215- 
217:  membei-s  of  expedition  at  Quebec.  539. 
Kirkc,  Gervais,  expedition  against  French.  211   note,  213-214. 


INDEX. 


S^JQ 


Kir/ce,   Louis,   sou    of   Gervais,    takes   possession   of   Quebec,    107-108;    burned    in 

effigy.  193;  agent  of  David,  103,  1!)4.   105;   takes  Indian  girls  to  Tadousac. 

1!»5;  fourtesy  to  Chaniplain,  196;  visits  religions  houses.   197;  tolerance  of. 

199;  mutiny  against,   21 S  219;   godfather  of  Couillnrd's  daughter,   219. 
Kirke,  Thomas.  Captain,  son   of  Oervais.   Inirned   in   effigy,   193;   agent   of  David. 

193,   194-195;  gives  Le  Bailiff  charge  of  conpany's  stores,    19r>;   visits   rcli 

gious  houses,  197  ;  conducts  Champlaiu  to  '.ilngland.  197  ;  captures  Do  ("aen. 

198-199;   inventory  of  company's  stores,  214  note;  at   tjuehcc.   21H:   tradin-,' 

voyage  of,  218;  permits  De  Caen  to  trade,  218;  accused  of  burning  hubitaliou. 

222. 
Knox,  John,  intolerance  of,  75. 
Koiissenac  (Koiiscnck.  Oousf^inor,  Cnshnnc),  trading  station,  site  of  Augusta.  Me.. 

farmers  of,  307:  Druillettes  at.  311. 

La  Badaitdf, (Bcchird),  hcuise  burned.  SGG.  428. 

La  Barre,  Pierre  Le  Fevre  dr.  Governor  of  New   France    (1082-1685),   succeeds 

Frontenac,  395  ;  poor  Indian  policy,  395  ;  recalled,  395  ;  releasee  English  ship. 

518;  authorizes  .Toliet  to  take  possession  of  River  Nemiskan,   519-520. 
Labor,  privileges  conferred  upon  artisans.  208  ;  wages  paid  to  servants  of  .Tesuits. 

316,  .'!22  ;  work  permitted  on  saints'  days,  321  ;  wages  paid  to  mason.  324: 

enforced  on  public  works,  504-505  ;  craftsmen  of  Quebec,  507  ;  rates  of  wages, 

511  ;  wages  of  fur  companies'  employes,  175,  175  note.  521  note,  537-538. 
Labrador,  early  knowledge  of,  19,  20,  28;  explored  by  Cartier,  19,  22;  La  Roche, 

Lieutenant-Governor  of,  28. 
Lac  8t.  Pierre,  Iroquois  at,  349. 
La  Cadie.     See  Acadia. 
La  Chaise,  Francis  D'Aix  de,  .Jesuit    (Pere  La   Chaise),   advises  against   brandy 

traffic,  458. 
La   Chestnnje,   Charles   Auhert   de,   in    conflict    with    revenue   agent,    518-519;    In 

action  against   Gitton,   531 ;    interest   in   Compagnie  du   Nord,   533-534,    535, 

536. 
La  Chine,  Que.,  origin -of  name.  9;   intemperance  of,  451.  453. 
Lachine  Rapids   (Sault  St.  Louis),  Cartier  at,  9,  24,  31,  44.     8ee  also  Sault  Ht. 

Louis. 
La  Croix,  Cecile  Rieher  de,  TJrsuline,  sails  for  Canada.  200. 
La  Danversirre,  Jerome  Royer  de,  receives  seignory  of  Montreal,  410. 
La  ferti,  Jacques  de,  Abb6  de  Ste.  Madeleine,  exonerates  Jesuits,  278. 

La  Fontaine,  ,  punished  for  dueling,   321. 

La  Oritie, .  engjiged  in  duel,  320. 

La  Foriere,  Montagnais  chief,   warns  colonists,    128. 

La  Honian,  Armand  Louis  de  Drlo/idnrce  de,  at  Montreal.  400-401  ;  admits  ability 

of   Jesuits.    -133-434:    admires   Canadian    women,    405.    491;    descril)es   Jesuit 

college.  468,  475;  describes  the  habitant.  490-491  :  sketch  of,  492  note:  de- 
scribes fur  trade,  523. 
Lairet  Creek,  25  ;  site  of  first  European  habitation,  25.  32. 
La  Jonquicre,   Jacques    Pierre    Taffanel,   Marqnis    de,    Governor    of    New    France 

(1749-1752),  death  and  burial  of.  356. 
La  Journai/e,  Sienr  de.  loses  ti-ading  privileges.  68-69. 
Lake  Champlain,  derivation   of  name,   92;   defeat   of   Iroquois   at,   92-93;    return 

from,  (14  :  an  Iroquois  rotite.  246  ;  first  explorer  of,  295. 
Lake  Erie,  migration  of  Iroquois  to,   55  :  exploration   of.   390. 
Lake  Huron,  migration  of  Hurons  to,  55;  soldiers  on,  284  :  discovery  of,  295. 
Lake  Mistassini,  96;  Alhanel  on.  517. 

IjOke  Xipissinf/j  Huron  line  of  Might,  61  ;  fur  trade  route.  2S6. 
Lake  of  the  Two  Mountains.  Champlain  near,  101. 
Lake  Ontario,  Iroquois  migrate  to,   55 ;    Iroquois   boundary,    56 ;    Iroquois   route, 

275;  Champ.'ajr"   on,   295. 


57° 


INDEX. 


1m1;c  St.  John,  rendezvous  of  Algonquin  tribes.  .:>!  ;  All^anel  on,  317. 

Lake  at.  Piter,  Cartier  on,  31-3::  ;  Montmagny  drives  Iroquois  from,  246  ;  Iroquois 
near,  2tiT. 

Lake  Siincov.  Brul^  dispatched  from.  131. 

Lake  Suite)  ior,  sought  by  English  traveler,  270 ;  sighted  by  Olivier,  205  ;  discov- 
ery of  copper  on,  386:  monopoly  of  fur  trade  given  to  Henry,  523  note. 

Lakes,  Ureat,  cradle  of  Huron-Iroquois  race,  56;  line  of  demarcation  lietween 
English  and  French.  01  ;  abandoned  by  France,  92  ;  limit  of  grant  to  Hundred 
Associates,  208;   lourney  of  Jesuits  to,  233. 

Lakes.  I'viter,  region,  confused  with  Saguenay,  French  trade  checked,  32,  268, 
328. 

La  Landc,  Jean  de,  .Jesuit  brother,  accompanies  .Jognes,  2So  ;  death  of,  285. 

Lakniant,  Charles,  .Jesuit,  Superior  of  Canadian  missions  (1625-1629),  borrows 
carpenters  to  work  on  mission  house,  174;  on  supremacy  of  fur  trade,  174- 
175;  baptizes  Indian  girl,  178:  sends  Jesuits  to  France,  179;  writes  to 
Champlain,  186.  201  ;  shipwrecked.  221 ;  arrives  at  Quebec,  232 ;  officiates  at 
burial  of  Champlain.  240  ;  labors  in  Canada.  252. 

Laleiiiant,  Gabriel,  -Jesuit,  nephew  of  Charles  and  Jerome,  martyred,  233,  300  ; 
leaves  Three  Rivers,  300. 

Luleiiiant,  Jerome,  Jesuit.  Superior  of  Canadian  missions  (1645-1650,  1659-1665). 
tells  of  inauguration  of  Company  of  Habitants,  281  ;  appointed  Superior. 
284,  315;  faith  in  Iroquois,  285;  estimate  of  profits  of  fur  trade,  287;  per- 
mits Jesuits  to  trade,  200  :  admits  weakness  of  French  defenses,  293  ;  serv- 
ant engaged  l)y,  316;  builds  oven,  316;  desires  pay  for  Beauport  lands,  318; 
observes  New  Year,  319;  at  Three  Rivers,  324;  objects  to  bonfires.  328;  sails 
for  France,  331 ;  tells  of  typhoid  among  emigrants,  352-353 ;  describes 
quarrel  between  civil  and  religious  powers,  353,  425,  430  ;  describes  earth- 
quake, 366-367  :  expenses  of  Society  of  Jesus,  368  ;  candidate  for  bishop,  413 ; 
appointed  grand  vicar.  415 ;  pleads  for  liquor  dealer.  427 ;  death.  438 ; 
sketch  of.  43S-439  :  letter  to  Oliva,  469;  Journal  des  Jesuits,  300,  313-331. 
515  ;  Relations,  59  note. 

La  Marclie, de,  letter  to  Ponchartrain,  485. 

Lamarek,  Jean  Baptistc  Pierre  Antoine  de  Monet,  Chevalier  de,  cited.  13  note. 

Lambert,  Eustace,  commands  flying  column,  337;  letter  from  Pijart  to,  414. 

La  Mothe.  Jacques  de,  fined  for  exceeding  tariff  i-ates,  511. 

La  Mothe  (Motte),  Nicolas  de,  French  officer,  accompanies  Champlain  to  Quebec. 

128:  sketch  of.  128;  arrives  at  Quebec,  13i) ;  remains  in  Canada.  132. 
Lamij,  Sbel.  roiireiir  di  bois,  text  of  contract.  536-538. 

Land,  feudal  tenure  transferred  to  Canada.  16-17.  234  :  effect  of  colonial  tenure  on 
French  commerce.  66  ;  terms  of  feudal  cessions.  80,  237  ;  tenure  under  Virgiuia 
Company,  156-157;  terms  of  grant  to  Company  of  Hundred  Associates,  208. 
209,  234-235,  237  ;  grant  to  Martin,  223  ;  tenure  of  grant  to  Hebert.  235  : 
tenure  of  seigniorial  grants,  236 ;  abolition  of  seigniorial  tenure,  237,  403 
note;  persistence  of  feudal  tenure  in  France,  237:  binding  force  of  feudal 
tenure  in  Canada,  238.  230  ;  Teutonic  allodial  system  of  tenure,  238  ;  seldom 
transferred,  239  ;  grant  to  Bourdon.  253  ;  to  Jesuits,  253.  264-265,  494  :  to 
Duchesse  d'Aiguillon.  257.  294  ;  to  dower  Indian  girls,  264  :  absolute  grants 
of.  264  ;  granted  to  Lauzon,  265  :  of  Montreal  Island.  271  :  titles  to  Jesuit, 
323  ;  grant  to  Rccollets,  442  ;  exempt  from  tithes.  447  :  extent  of  Jesuit.  478  ; 
grant  to  T'rsulines.  404.  See  also  Commercinl  Com.panies,  Feudal  system. 
Jesuits.  Seigneures,  Seifjneuries. 
Land,  "  Height  of,"  Albanel  holds  council  with  Indians  at.  517. 

Lane.  Sir  Ralph,  condition  of  .Jamestown  under.  91. 

L'lntjlois,  Marie,  claim  against  Company  of  Hundred  Associates.  225. 

Langloift,  Solomon,  claim  against  Company  of  Hundred  Associates.  225. 


INDPIX. 


571 


La  yfonc,  Joseph,  Jesuit,  mt'cls  Kocollots  with  nows  of  Kirlve's  departure,  184. 

Lanouillicr,  ,  tsiciir,  contracts  for  ferry,  TtlO. 

La  Peltric.  Marie  MaOcUnv  dc  Uiic  da  Cliauvigny),  interest  awakened  In  Canada 
missions,  257,  258;  slcetcli  of,  258-250;  meetiny  witli  Marie  de  I'lncarnarion, 
200;  fictitious  marriage  of.  250,  260,  411,  420  note;  sails  for  Canada.  2(;i! 
41]  ;  arrives  in  Canada,  2G1-2G2;  attempt  to  educate  Indian  girls  unsuccess- 
ful, 2(i2,  4(J5  ;  compared  to  Mile.  Mance.  271;  at  I'oiute  anx  I'izeaux,  27-*5 ; 
liouse  of,  282,  420;  cliaracter,  283,  437-438;  New  Year's  observances,  310; 
rents  hou.se  to  Laval,  420-421  ;  death.  437-438. 

La  Place,  Jacques  de,  .Tesuit,  sails  for  Canada,  271. 

La  Pothcric,  Claude  Charles  Le  Hoy  de.  cited,  46S ;  praises  Canadians,  491; 
sketcli  of,  492  note;  depicts  Quebec,  40(!  ;  describes  Chateau  St.  Louis.  5nL>. 

La  PotlierUi,  Jacques  Ic  Ncuf  dc,  arrives  in  Canada,  251  ;  Governor  of  Three 
Uivers.  348  ;  checks  Iroquois,  .348. 

La  R'alde,  Raymond  de,  favors  Catholics,  1()3  ;  neglects  fur  trade,  165;  admiral  of 
de  Caen"s  fleet,  174  ;  asks  aid  against  free  traders,  177  ;  refuses  passes  to 
Jesuits,  179;  fails  to  send  supplies  to  Quebec,  182;  arrives  at  Quebec,  224. 

La  Roche  IJaiUon,  Joseph  dc,  KecoUet,  sails  for  Canada,  172;  starts  for  Huron 
country,  175. 

La  Roche  de  Bretagne,  Troilus  dc  Mesgonez.  Marquis  de,  royal  concession  to.  68, 
70-80,  237;  failure  of,  70,  70. 

La  Rochcfoucault  de  L-iancovrt,  Due  de,  77. 

La  Rochelle,  France,  merchants  of,  associated  with  De  Monts.  73 ;  ;)rrlval  of 
Champlain  at.  101;  free  traders  of.  104,  105,  108,  110,  140-141,  151,  162; 
merchants  reluctant  to  .ioin  Company  of  Associates,  110-111  ;  merchants  ob- 
tain special  license.  111  ;  attacked  by  English.  170,  211  ;  siege  of.  203;  fall  of, 
211  ;  Montreal  colonists  sail  from,  271  ;  claims  diocesan  rights  in  Canada, 
413,  415;  claims  Hudson  Bay  trade,  ::^50-251. 

Larosc  {La  Rose),  hanged  for  arson,  306,  428. 

La  Routic,  French  pilot,  in  first  figlit  with  Iroquois,  02. 

La  Salle,  Rene  Robert  Cavelicr,  Sieur  de.  forestalled  by  BrulC,  131;  voyage  to 
Canada,  380  ;  excites  anger  of  Hennepin,  380  ;  enters  on  western  exploration, 
38!t-300  ;  gains  alliance  of  Illinois.  .305;  rebuilds  fort  Cataraqui  (Frontenao, 
395.  508;  evidence  on  brandy  question.  458  note;  death  of,  400;  trading  priv- 
ileges of,  508:  character,  508. 

La  Salle,  til.,  origin  of  name,  386-387. 

Las  Gasas.  Bartolouie,  liishop  of  Chiapa  (Apostle  of  the  Indians),  goodness  of, 
112113. 

Lataiynant,  Oahriel,  incorporator  of  Comijauy  of  Hundred  Associates.  207. 

La  Tesserle  (La  Tesserie),  Jacques  Descailhaut,  Sieur  dc,  member  of  council.  433. 

La  Tour,  licrtrand,  I'.AMie  de,  Mcnioire  svr  la  vie  de  M.  de  TjOral.  cited    443,  445. 

La  Tour,  Charles  Amador  de,  friend  of  Gibb(.ns.  300;  sketch  of,  306,  306-307  note. 

La  Tour,  Mme.,  defends  fort.  306  ;  second  marriage  of,  306-307  note. 

haurcntidc  Ranoe.  26. 

Lauzon,  Charles  de,  Sieur  do  Charny,  invested  with  seignories  of  La  Chine  and 
Levis,  334  ;  grand  niaitre  des  eaux  et  foi'Ots  de  Nouvelle  France.  334  ;  marries 
Marie  Louise  Oiflfa'-d.  334;  Governor  ad  inlerim.  335.  344.  340,  347.  348: 
returns  to  France  and  enters  church,  335  ;  Indian  nolicy.  345-347  :  transfers 
office  to  D'Aillebout,  346,  347-348  ;  returns  to  Canada  with  Laval,  408  ;  in 
ecclesiastical   council,  421. 

hauzon,  FranQois  de    receives  seignory  of  La  I'rarie.  334  ;  transfers  seignory.  334. 

Lauzon.  Jean  de.  Governor  of  New  France  (1651-1656),  intendant  of  Company  of 
Hundred  Associates.  210.  265,  333-334:  estates  granted  to.  265.  3:!4  ;  grant.* 
Montreal  Island  to  Montreal  Association.  271.  334.  410:  succeeds  D'Aillc- 
bout  as  Governor,  332;  colonization  scheme,  335,  342-343:  administration  of. 


572  INDEX. 

333-33-1  ,«35-33r).  343-344;  informed  of  treaoliery  of  Iliirons,  338;  sends 
Jesuit  to  Onondagas,  339  ;  sails  for  France,  344  ;  confiscates  Quebec  warehouse 
of  Montreal  Assoolation,  3(55,  403. 

Lauzon,  John,  fils,  created  grand  senesclial  of  Nmivellc  France,  334  ;  appointed 
judge,  334  ;  marriage  of,  334  :  killed  1).\-  Irdqudis,  33.5,  3.j7. 

Lattzon,  Louis,  receives  seignory  of  l^a  Citere  and  <;andarville,  334;  marries  Mile, 
de  Fossambault,  334-335. 

La  Vacheric  (cow  pasture),  lands  cleared,  322;  terms  of  patent  of,  323;  passing 
of,  490. 

Laval  dc  MoiUmorcnci/,  Mar.  Frani^oise  Oe,  nomination  due  to  Mazarin,  333;  ar- 
rives at  Quebec  (1G.")0)  as  titular  bishop,  3.j1,  352.  412,  415-410.  410-421; 
quarrels  with  D'Argenson.  353,  360,  423-424.  426.  453;  quarrels  with  Queylus, 
360,  416.  417-418;  has  three  men  shot  for  selling  brandy.  360,  425-426,  427: 
excommunicates  liquor  dealers,  365,  452,  453.  454 ;  carries  grievance  to 
Louis  XIV.  (1662),  365.  427.  453,  (1678)  45S;  returns  to  Quebec  ( 1663),  372, 
428.  429  ;  excommunicates  De  Mezy,  373,  430  ;  letter  to,  from  Colbert,  385  ; 
returns  to  Quebec  as  consecrated  bishop  (1675),  389,  394-395,  436:  quarrels 
with  Frontenac,  394,  395,  418,  437,  452  ;  in  France,  394  ;  resigns  bishopric 
(1685),  395;  austere  rule  of,  400,  401-402;  quarre's  with  Talon,  403  note  ; 
founds  Confraternity  of  the  Holy  Family  at  Quebec,  403  note;  letter  to  Propa 
ganda,  404,  435;  at  the  Hermitage  of  Caen.  412.  428,  431.  480;  candidate 
of  Jesuits,  416-417;  delay  in  consecration  of.  417.  436;  at  Indian  council, 
422;  i-ansoms  captive  Iroquois,  422:  deals  with  witclicraft  and  heresy.  425- 
426;  quarrels  with  D'Avagour.  427.  437;  quarrels  with  De  Mezy,  428-430, 
432,  4-H  ;  colony  injured  by,  432  ;  value  of  lialemant  to.  439  ;  opposed  to 
Recollets,  439,  441.  444 ;  preserves  Canada  from  mendicant  orders,  441, 
444  ;  objects  to  Advent  sermon,  442  ;  allows  Recollets  to  build  hospital,  442  ; 
establishes  Quebec  Seminary,  444-445,  460,  466,  467  ;  issues  tithe  ordinance, 
444-446  :  views  on  brandy  traffic,  445-446  ;  sends  Dudouyt  to  Paris  to  secure 
prohibition,  456  ;  sends  statement  on  liquor  traffic  to  Louis  XIV.,  457  ;  re- 
signs bishopric  (1685),  459;  forbidden  to  return  to  Canada.  459;  returns  to 
Canada  (1688),  450-460;  opens  Lesser  Seminary,  467-468;  decides  to  educate 
a  native  clergy,  469-470;  ordains  that  Cathedral  Chapter  shall  be  selected 
from  Seminary.  479  ;  consistent  life  of.  481  ;  rescued  from  fire.  482  ;  death 
of,  482,  490  ;  technical  school  established  by,  485-486  ;  founds  scholarships, 
486;  memorial  to  Colbert  on  exclusion  of  heretics.  513. 

Laval  Unitwrsity,  erection  cf,  484;  location  of,  497;  Hamel's  Sketch,  cited,  484 
note. 

Laverdiere,  Ahhe  C.  H..  authority  on  site  of  Notre  Dame  de  la  Recouvrance, 
230.  241;  Champhtin,  59  note.  134-135,  198;  Champlain  cited,  538,  539; 
and  Casgrain,  Journal  rfc.s  Jesuits,  314. 

L'Ancovr/iii',  Francois,  conreiir  de  hois,  text  of  contract,   536-638. 

L'Anoe, ,  Parisian  poet,  with  Champlain.  109;  cited.  109;  at  Island  of  Ste. 

Helen.  11  r)  ;  at  Tadousac.  110;  sails  for  France,  110. 

Le  Bnillif, ,  clerli  of  De  Caen  Company,  put  in  charge  of  company's  stores. 

195;  accused  of  thoft,  195. 

Le  BailHf,  George,  Kecollet,  meets  re|)resentatives  of  De  Caen,  148;  diplomatic 
mission  of,  150;  fails  to  mediate,  150-151;  pays  De  Caen"s  demand,  151; 
carries  bill  of  grievances  from  colonists  to  Louis  XIIL,  152-153, 

Le  Bean.  GuilUmme.  purchases  arms  and  tools  for  New  France,   70. 

Le  Ber,  Jacques,  arrested  for  conspiracy,  365;  in  suit  against  Oitton,  531. 

Le  Bocsme,  Lovis,  .Tesnit  brother,  wounded  by  Moliawks,  337. 

Le  Breton,  Dom  GuiUaume.  captain  of  the  "  Bmerillon,"  significance  of  title  of 
"  Dom."  30;  visits  Hochelaga.  31. 

Lee, ,  Sieurs, directors  of  Compagnie  de  la  Colonie,  text  of  contract  with,  536, 

535. 


INDEX. 


573 


Le  Caron,  Joseph,  Recollet,  arrives  at  Quebec,  112,  Il7 ;  hastens  to  Grand  Sault, 
117  ;  leaves  Huron  village  for  Three  Rivers,  120  ;  returns  to  Quebec,  120  ; 
returns  to  France  on  behalf  of  Indians,  121  ;  receives  little  encouragement, 
122-123,  125;  celebrates  first  marriage  in  Canada,  125;  insists  on  surrender 
of  Indian  murderers.  128-129 ;  signs  petition  to  king,  153 ;  returns  with 
Hurons,  1(JG ;  sails  for  Canada,  174;  stavts  for  threatened  mission,  1S3 ; 
envoy  to  Kirlie,  194  ;  favors  scheme  of  Recollets  to  remain  in  Canada  during 
English  occupation,  197  ;  second  schoolmaster  in  Canada,  462. 

Lcchcvalicr,  ,  arrives  at  Quebec,  4(j6. 

Le  Clercq,  Chretien,  Recollet.  cited,  115  ;  describes  first  mass  celebrated  at  Que- 
bec, 117;  historian  of  Quebec,  119;  deplores  Huguenot  influence  on  Indians. 
122  ;  story  of  Iroquois  attack  on  monastery,  160-167 ;  tells  of  .Jesuits  en- 
couraged by  Recollets,  178  ;  reasons  given  by,  for  delay  of  French  to  take  over 
Quebec,  213;  estimate  of  value  of  De  Caen  Company's  beaver  trade,  :il4 
note;  describes  fortifications  of  Chtiteau  St.  Louis,  503;  Etabllssement  de  la 
Foy,  ed.  1691,  cited,  539.. 

"  Le  Coquin,"  an  old  ship  of  Champlain's  fleet,  repaired,  188,  190;  Pontgravfe 
refuses  command  of,  190  :  sailed  by  Boulle,  190  ;  tonnage  of,  191 ;  captured 
by  Kirlce,  191.   195. 

Le  Oendre,  Lucas,  member  of  first,  later  of  second,  Company  of  Associates,  dis- 
solves with  first  company,   102,  103  ;  writes  to  Champlain,  165. 

Le  Ooiipil,  Robert,  appointed  to  settle  claim  of  Cartier,  49. 

Lc  Groseilliers.    See  Groseilliers. 

Lc  Oroiix,  J.,  signs  petition  to  king.  153. 

L'Incarnalion,  Marie  (Martin  nee  Gujjart,  Guijard),  de.  meets  Mme.  de  la  Peltrie, 
258-259,  260  ;  marriage  of.  259  ;  leaves  her  son  and  enters  a  convent,  259, 
260  ;  dreams  of  Canada,  260  ;  arrives  at  Quebec,  261-262  ;  attributes  desire 
of  Mohawks  for  religion  to  music  of  church  service,  341 ;  tells  of  Iroquois 
attack  on  convent,  349  ;  of  Huron  girls  at  convent,  351-352  ;  describes  guard- 
ing of  convent,  354-355 ;  expresses  current  opinion  on  earthquake,  367 ; 
Superior  of  Ursulines,  420,  438;  death  of,  437-438;  character  of.  438;  hope 
of,  in  founding  convent,  495  ;  curriculum  given  by,  465  ;  Lettres  Historiqucs, 
value  of,  43S  ;  written  for  her  son,  438  ;   cited,  530. 

L'IsIc,  AcliiUc,  Chevalier  de,  pursues  Iroquois,  246;  sent  to  receive  Hurons,  247; 
Knight  of  Malta,  295. 

Le  Jcitne,  Paul,  Jesuit,  tells  of  plot  against  Kirke,  219;  describes  condition  of 
Quebec  after  English  occupation,  222-223,  224  ;  Superior  of  Canadian  mission, 
229  ;  unable  to  send  missionaries  with  Hurons,  229  ;  tells  of  austere  piety 
of  early  days  in  Quebec,  231 ;  method  of  evangelizing  Hurons,  231  ;  desire 
to  render  Indians  sedentary,  231,  253;  relates  his  experiences  with  Mon- 
tagnais.  233 ;  delivers  funeral  oration  of  Champlain,  240 ;  has  charge  of 
commission  of  temporary  (iovernor.  244  ;  returns  to  Quebec  with  Montmaguy, 
247;  returns  to  Three  Rivers  to  treat  with  Hurons,  247:  selects  site  of  mis- 
sion of  Sillery  (St.  Joseph),  253-254;  correspondence  with  Mme.  de  Combal- 
let,  257 :  inspires  Mme.  de  la  Peltrie.  258  ;  succeeded  by  Vimont,  269  ;  de- 
scribes play  performed  at  Quebec,  269-270  ;  returns  to  France,  270,  362-363  ; 
justifies  trading  by  Jesuits,  278,  290;  candidate  for  bishopric,  413:  opens 
school  after  Restoration,  462;  Relations,  cited,  .59  note,  210,  222,  231-232, 
233;  Relations,  ob.iect  of,  251-256-257,  314  note;  Relations,  asked  to  con- 
tinue, 269. 

Le  Maistre  ,  ,  Sulpician,  killed  by  Iroquois,  358. 

Le  Maistre,  Simon,  attorney  for  de  Lauzon,  265. 

Lc  Mereier,  Francis  Joseph.  Jesuit,  meets  Onondaga  envoys,  338  ;  succeeds  I.ale- 
mant,  438. 

Lemire,  ,  elected  syndic,  430. 


=;74 


INDEX. 


Lniioiiic.  Jacques  M.,  Fortifications  ct  rues  dc  Quchcc,  referred  to.  406  note. 

Le  Moiinc,  Himon,  Jesuit,  envoy  to  Uiioudagas,  ;>;!S-;J39  ;  welcomed  by  Onondagas, 
340;  returns  to  Quebec  (1054),  340,  341,  (1664),  429;  invites  martyrdom, 
342  ;  exliorts  Ilurons,  345  ;  returns  to  Montreal,  347  ;  with  Iroquois  envoys, 
340.  350  ;  filth  mission  to  Iroquois,  358  ;  secures  release  of  French  captives, 
358,   364. 

Leo  A'.,  Pope,  period  of,  11  ;  character  of,  12. 

Le  Petit,  Louis,  captain  in  Carignan  regiment,  enters  priesthood,  404. 

Le  I'icart,  Jean,  in  suit  against  Gitton,  531  ;  stocivholder  in  Compagnie  du  Nord, 
534,   535,  530. 

Le  Hahlon  (Anse  Sablon),  Cartier's  fleet  at,  24. 

Lcscarbot  (L-Escarhot),  Marc,  cited,  24,  32,  09,  74,  97;  unreliability  of,  40;  preju 
diced  against  f'artier,  50;  confidence  in  the  existence  of  Hochelaga,  54; 
authority  on  fur  trading  grant  to  Noe',  68-60  ;  opposed  to  free  trade,  60.  97  ; 
a  slveptic,  71,  74;  gives  text  of  corcession  to  De  Monts,  81;  representations 
to  Henry  IV  ,  83  ;  first  winter  at  Quebec,  89  ;  Histoire  dc  la  Nouvelle  France 
dedication  cited,  81. 

L'Esvinrs  (Fspiiftti/).     See  Couillard. 

Lesser  Scminari/  (Tetlt  Scminaire),  succeeds  Jesuit  college,  463,  467;  early  scope 
of,  407,  468;  school  for  priests,  407;  opening  of,  467,  408;  college  pupils 
lodged  at,  408,  470;  auxiliary  to  .lesuit  college,  407,  468,  470;  prosperity 
of,  474  ;  buildings  and  site  of,  481-482;  scale  of  charges  at,  483  note.  Hee 
also  Jesuit  College,  Jesuits,  Laval. 

Le  tiueur,  Jean,  dit  St.  Sauvetir,  secular  priest,  arrives  in  Canada,  253,  407  ;  chap- 
lain to  Hospital  nuns,  407  ;  name  pei'petuated,  407. 

Le  Tardif,  Nicollet  (Olivier),  interpreter,  signs  petition  to  king,  153;  early  col- 
onist, 169  ;  surrenders  keys  of  Quebec  to  Kirke,  195  ;  stories  of  discoveries 
unheeded,  295;  death  of,  205  note. 

Levant,  commercial  rights  in,  secured  by  France,  67,  95. 

Lietjois,  Jean,  Jesuit  brother,  arrives  in  Canada,  232;  at  Quebec,  316;  confers 
with  Montmagnv,  320  note;  killed  by  Iroquois,  337,  341. 

Liquor,  price  of  brandy.  383.  458  jiote.  511  ;  French  name  for  whiskey,  450 ; 
wholesomeness  of  mm,  450  ;  jjrice  of  wines,  511  ;  Histnirc  de  I'eau  de  vie  en 
Canada,  cited,  451. 

Liquor  traffic  with  Indians,  introduced  by  English,  252 ;  opposed  by  Canadian 
Cliurch,  252,  450-452,  456-457;  causes  dissension  between  bishop  and  Cloy- 
ernors.  360,  365.  373  (sec  also  Laval)  ;  attitude  of  Queylus  toward,  415;  con- 
sidered necessary  by  traders,  450,  452-453  ;  Iroquois  chiefs  petition  for  re- 
striction of,  450  note :  appeal  against,  carried  to  France,  456,  457 ;  council 
convened  to  report  on.  457-458,  458  note.     See  also  Punishments. 

"Little  River."     See  St.  Charles  River. 

Livre,  French  money,  v.alue  of.  175  note. 

Lonrj  Point,  Que.,  lands  of  Hospital  nuns  at,  323  ;  lands  of  TTrsulines  at,  323-324. 

Lonoueil,  Charles  Le  Mojine  (Tiemoine) ,  Sieur  de.  burial  place  of,  242. 

Lomjueville, ,  Due  de,  sponsor  of  Huron  child,  176. 

Loquin,  - — — ,  clerk  of  Company  of  Associates,  arrives  at  Quebec,  130,  132. 

Lordtc,  Aneienve.  .Tesuit  mission  named  for  the  famous  shrine  in  Italy,  fugitive 
Ilurons  colonized  at,  233,  352  ;  population  of.  492. 

Lorette,  Jcunc,  Indians  of.  232  :  Hurons  removed  to,  352  ;  population  of.  370  note. 

Jjouis  A'7.  of  France,  destroys  feudal  power,  15. 

Louis  XITT.  of  France,  colonizing  system  of,  81,  138;  publication  of  decree  of, 
forbidden  by  Parliament  of  Rouen,  108;  weakness  of.  123,  201-202;  letter  to 
Company  of  Associates.  138;  confirms  Montmorency  as  viceroy,  139;  prom- 
ises armament  for  Quel^ec.  140,  ]46;  letter  to  Champlain.  140,  146:  decree 
regulating   trading    companies,    149 ;    arms   furnished   by,    151-152,    196-197 : 


INDKX.  5  75 

petition    of  colonists  to,    152-153;   grants   charter   to   Company    of   Hundred 
Associates,  207  2(1!),  210;  death  of,  27G,  332. 

Louis  XIV.  (le  Grand)  of  France,  colonizing  system  of,  81;  bad  policy  of,  203 
takes  over  rights  and  privileges  of  Company  of  Ilimdred  Associates,  227 
376  ;  i)irth  of,  celebrated  at  Quebec,  2G3  •  fete  of.  260  ;  issues  edicts  for  gov 
ernment  of  New  France  (1647),  288-280,  (1663)  37.3-374.  (1675)  375;  as 
sumes  control  of  Canada,  333,  363,  372,  375  ;  promises  soldiers  and  settlers 
for  Canada,  363  ;  sends  comraissionor  to  Canada,  363-364  ;  abolishes  Com- 
pany of  West  Indies,  375,  378  ;  opposed  to  popular  representation.  375  ;  cre- 
ates Company  of  West  Indies,  376-378;  sends  soldiers  to  Canada,  378,  380; 
takes  measures  to  promote  marriage,  380-381 ;  indifference  to  commerce,  387- 
388  ;  ojjposes  exploration,  390  ;  recalls  Frontenac  and  Duchesneau,  305  ;  dis- 
satisfied with  La  Barre,  305;  appoints  l-a  Valiier  to  succeed  I^aval,  305; 
gratuity  to  J<"rontenac,  30{<-300  ;  forbids  Queylus  to  return  to  Canada,  419  ; 
issues  edict  for  re -establishment  of  Recollets,  440;  grants  land  to  Recollets, 
442  ;  regulates  tithes,  447,  448  ;  orders  committee  to  act  on  liquor  traffic.  457  ; 
infinity  of  details  submitted  to,  460  :  desires  institutions  placed  under  state 
control,  466  ;  desires  that  Indians  stiall  be  educated,  467  ;  supplies  apparatus 
for  Jesuit  college,  469  ;  gift  to  Seminary,  483  ;  forbids  Saint  Valiier  to  re- 
turn to  Canada,  488,  490  ;  urges  extirpation  of  heresy,  513 ;  extract  from 
letter  to  Compagnie  de  la  Baie  d'Hudson  en  Canada,  532-533. 

Louise  of  ^avoi/,  negotiates  treaty  of  Cambrai,  40. 

Louisiana,  Jesuits  expelled  from,    176. 

Louvigny,  ,  report  on  corvee,  504-505. 

Loyola,  lynatius,  founder  of  Jesuit  order,  30,  471  ;  recognizes  power  of  wealth, 
115,  471;  inspiration  of  system  of,  233;  discipline  of,  412;  life  and  labors, 
471-473  ;  education  the  great  factor  in  system  of,  472-473  ;  fall  of  order  due 
to  education  of  its  members,  474  ;  Oonstitutions,  412  ;  Letter  on  Obedience, 
412. 

Lue, ,  Recollet,  arrives  in  Canada.  440. 

Luther,  Martin,  revolt  of,  11,  114,  234;  autocracy  of,  75. 

Luynes  (Lvincs),  Charles  d'Mhert,  Due  de,  favorite  of  Louis  XII.,  123;  relations 
with  Richelieu,  202. 

Luzon,  Bishop  of.     See  Ricbelieu. 

Macart,  Charles,  in  Compagnie  du  Nord,  534,  535,  536. 

Maekemie,  Alexander,  report  on  fur  trade,  522-523. 

Magdalen  Islands,  explored  by  Cartier,  19,  22. 

Maygiola,  vicomte,  map  of,  20.  23-24. 

Maine,  exploration  of  coast  of.  77  ;  failure  of  De  Mont.s  in,  83  ;  descent  of  Argall 
on,  91  ;  landing  of  Plymouth  Company  on  coast  of.  156  ;  Algonquins  of,  296, 
303.     *S'(T  a/so  Acadia. 

Maisonneure,  Paul  de  Chom.edey.  Sieur  de.  probably  a  member  of  Company  of 
Associates,  110:  arrives  at  Quebec,  271,  298;  urged  to  defer  establishment 
of  ViUe-Marie  (Montreal),  272,  298;  takes  formal  possession  of  Montreal, 
272,  271  :  entertained  by  Pizeaux.  273;  delegate  to  France,  287,  291-292.  298; 
governorship  of  New  France  offered  to.  298  ;  opposed  to  Jesuit  influence,  340, 
409 ;  governors  of  New  France  jealous  of,  365,  453 ;  applies  to  Oiler  for 
priests,  409. 

Maizerct,  Louis  An  go  de,  priest,  arrives  at  Quebec,  466. 

Manee,  Jeanne,  arrives  at  Quebec,  271  ;  character  of.  271,  283;  death  of,  43a 

Manhattan.     See  New  York. 

Manitoba,  development  retarded  by  fur  companies.  524  note. 

Maniuaki,  Que.,  Indian  population  of.  "7(t  note. 

Mann,  Captain  Eustace,  free  trader,  testimony  of,  216. 

Marais,  — ,  arrives  at  Quebec,  00;  in  first  conflict  with   Iroquois,  92. 


gyS  INDEX. 

Marblehead.  Mass.,  Druillettes  at,  3o!). 

Mardi  Ura-t  (Shrove  Tuesday),  observances,  319,  325,  327. 

Mare  Indicum,  the  great  sea  of  Verrazzano,  20,  22. 

Marcul, ,  assigned  to  manage  a  comedy.  4U2  ;  excites  the  anger  of  Saint  Val 

lier,  402  ;  imprisoned  for  blasphemy,  403. 

Margaret  of  Austria,  negotiates  treaty  of  Cambrai.  40. 

Maryry,  Pierre,  cited,  458  yiote. 

Markfjerie,  Francois,  story  of  capture  by   Iroquois,  260-267. 

Maria   (Baie  des  Chaleurs).   Indian  population  of,  370  note. 

Marine  Hospital,  site  of,  25,  322, 

Marnot,  ,  shareholder  in  Compagnie  du  Nord.  533,  535. 

Marot,  Clement,  hymns  of,  shocli  .Jesuits,  177. 

Marquette,  Jaeques,  fate  of  narrative  of  explorations,  314  note;  discovery  of  Mis- 
sissippi, 386. 

Marquette,  Mich.,  origin  of  name.  387. 

Murriuue,  encouraged  between  French  and  Indians,  204;  promoted  by  Louis  XIV., 
380-3S1. 

Marseilles,  France,  Inquisition  in,  113. 

Marshalsea  Court  (Marechaussee) ,  established,  506. 

Marsolet,  Marie,  attends  ballet.  402. 

Marsoh't,  :Mcolas,  Sieur  de  St.  Aignan,  early  colonist,  160  ;  prevents  embarkation 
of  Indian  girls,  195 ;  stigmatized  by  Champlaiu,  195  ;  flghts  under  English, 
223. 

Marsolet,  Mnie.  Xicolas.  furnishes  pain  bcnit,  320. 

Martin  V.,  Pope,  modifies  rules  of  St.  Francis,  115-116. 

Martin,  Abraham,  dit  L'Ecossais,  early  colonist,  169  ;  remains  in  Canada  during 
Kirke's  occupation,  198,  223;  farm  of  ("Heights  of  Abraham"),  site  of 
Battle  of  the  "  Plains,"  223  ;  inaugurates  seal  fishing,  329. 

Martin,  Antoine,  dit  MontpeUier,  ballet  performed  at  marriage  of.  324. 

Martin,  Claude,  husband  of  Marie  de  I'lncarnation,  referred  to,  259. 

Martin,  Claude,  fits,  Benedictine  priest,  son  of  Marie  de  I'lncarnation,  259.  438. 

Martin,  ^ir  Henry,  receives  deposition  of  Champlain,  191,  197,  206;  receives  de- 
position of  Kirke,  211   note. 

Mary  II.,  Queen  of  Great  Britain.  396. 

Mass,  celebrated  at  Cartier's  winter  camp.  30;  midnight.  317,  318.  331;  lands 
granted  conditional  to  celebration  of,   323. 

Massachusetts  colonies,  religious  intolerance  in,  76;  settlement  of,  84,  158;  French 
seek  alliance  with,  303;  favor  French  alliance.  308,  310;  decline  French  alli- 
ance. 31 1. 

Masse,  Eniumund,  .Jesuit,  Lalemant  endeavors  to  retain  in  Canada.  179;  deafh 
and  burial  of.  320. 

Mattaua  River,  Huron  line  of  flight,  61. 

Mazarin,  Jutes,  cardinal  and  prime  minister  of  France.  276.  333  ;  colonial  policy. 
137-138.  332  ;  death  of,  36.3,  372  ;  indifferent  to  I.aval,  417. 

Maseau,  Philibert,  conreur  de  hois,  text  of  contract,  536-538. 

Mazures,  ,  organizes  flying  column.  337. 

'Meatix.  France,  Mme.  E>e  Cbamplain  founds  convent  at,  167. 

Medecis,  Marie  de,  Regent  of  France,  123,  201-202:  appoints  Condo  to  succeed 
Soissons.  103 :  reserves  trading  privileges  above  Quebec,  105 :  interdicts 
Huguenots.  112;  retires  to  Blois,  123:  opposed  by  Conde.  124;  relations  "'""'" 
Richelieu,   202. 

Memhre.  Zenohe,  Recollet,  accompanies  La  Salle,  389-.S90. 

Menard   (Minard).  Rene.  .Jesuit,  chaplain  of  Hospital  nuns,  407. 

Menendez  de  Avi'.rs,  Pedro,  destroyer  of  Huguenot  colony,  244. 

Mercy  of  Jesus,  order  of.     See  Hospital  Nuns. 


INDEX. 


577 


UerriUac,  ,  124. 

llerryinceting  Bay,  Druillettes  at,  306. 

Meullcs,  Jacques  dc,  Intendant  of  (."anada  (1682-1686),  395;  buildings  erected  by, 
499  ;  orders  cargo  of  trading  vessel  to  be  held  at  Quebec.  518  ;  issues  card 
money,   522. 

Mexico,  city,  first  university  under  royal  cha.ter  built  at,  462. 

Mc~eray,  Rene,  dit  Xopcc,  threatened  by   Iroquois,  34!). 

Mesy,  AtKjnstin  dc  t^uffrai/,  Siour  de.  tJovernor  of  Canada  (1663-1665),  death  and 
burial  of,  356.  430-431  ;  succeeds  Anvagour,  362,  412 ;  administration  of, 
372-373  ;  excommunicated,  373,  430  ;  at  Hermitage  of  Caen,  412,  428,  431  ; 
arrives  in  Canada,  427,  428  ;  conflict  with  Laval,  429-430,  445  ;  reorganizes 
council,  429-430  ;  character  of,  431-432  ;  recall.  432  ;  opposed  to  tithes,  445  ; 
appeals  to  Louis  XIV.,  445  ;  opposes  Sulpicians,  453. 

Mica,  mistaken  for  gold,  45,  45  note,  324. 

Michaelmas  Day,  feudal  observances  of,  239. 

Michel,  Jacijiies,  Huguenot,   harries  Cap  Tourmente,  183,   195. 

Micliilliniaeldnae.  trading  post  establisbed  at,  390;  fur  trade  at,  523  note. 

jilicDiacs,  Algonquin  tribe,  on  St.  Lawrence,  58  ;  seek  alliance  with  rrench,  287. 

MUjeon,  Jenn  Haptistc,  Sieur  de  Bransart,  represented  bj'  widow  and  heirs  in 
suit  against  Gitton.  531,   534,  535. 

Militia,  enlistment  of  first  Canadian,  '^74  ;  defeated  by  Iroquois,  336  ;  qualities  of. 
383,  391-392 ;  organized,  391  ;  place  of  captains  of,  in  church  processions, 
460.     ^ee  also  Carignan-Salif  res  regiment.  Soldiers. 

Miller,  John,  Tseiv  York  considered  and  improved,  249  note. 

Mills,  Roberval's,  at  Cap  Uouge,  47  ;  first  at  Quebec,  187  ;  site  of  Jesuits',  322 
323. 

Mingan  Islands,  Cartier  among,  23. 

Misaifjner,  Charles,  -Jesuit,  teacher  at  .Jesuit  college.  469. 

Miscon,  Island  of.  La  Kalde  on,  165  ;  colony  of,  trading  rights  reserved,  280. 

A[ls.nssippi  River,  said  to  have  been  discovered  by  Brule,  131  ;  route  from  Lakes 
t<',  discovered,  380. 

Mohaii.k  River,  valley  of,  possible  refuge  of  fugitive  Hurons,  55 ;  Iroquois  in 
valley  of,  56;  Dutch  on,  81  ;  linked  to  St.  Lawrence.  275. 

Mohaivks,  in  Iroquois  league,  57-62  ;  murder  Dutch  traders.  177  ;  French  accused 
of  debauching,  249  note;  French  captives  at  villages  of,  266;  strength  of, 
276,  361  ;  at  peace  council.  284;  epidemic  among,  285-286;  attempt  to  unite 
Hurons  with  league,  338-339.  345  ;  desire  peace  with  French,  341. 

Moliere,  Tartufi'e  to  be  represented  at  Quebec,  401-403,  403  note,  498.  Sec  also 
Theatricals. 

Montaif/nais  (Algonquin  trii)e),  aided  against  Iroquois  by  Champlain,  90,  96-97; 
at  Quebec,  94,  245;  send  present  to  Ilsnry  IV.,  94;  at  Tadousac.  96:  D'Ol- 
beau  with,  119;  murder  l'"'renchmen,  126,  180;  plot  massacre  of  colonists. 
128;  proceedings  against,  128-130,  181  :  fight  Iroquois,  182;  Jesuits  among, 
230.  232,  250-251  ;  seek  alliance  with  French,  245;  at  Three  Rivers,  246-283; 
Druillettes  ask  protection  for,  308. 

Montaigne,  Michel  Eyquem  de,  Des  Goehrs  cited. 

Montcalm,  Gozon  de  St.  Viran,  Louis  Joseph,  Marquis  de,  cited,  291. 

Montagny,  Charles  Huoult  de,  Oovernor  of  New  France  (1636-164S).  piety  of, 
241,  245;  succeeds  Champlain,  244;  arrives  at  Quebec,  244;  at  Three  Rivers. 
245-246.  247.  283  ;  pursues  Iroquois,  246,  276 ;  fortifies  Quebec,  246 ;  at 
church  festivals,  219,  256;  «ends  envoys  to  Hurons.  255;  welcomes  nuns, 
261;  Indian  appellation  of.  267,  290;  attacks  Iroquois,  267;  has  play  per- 
formed for  Indians,  269-270;  opposed  to  establi.shment  of  Montreal,  271-272, 
298;  at  Montreal.  272;  builds  Fort  Richelieu,  274;  organizes  militia,  274; 
holds  council   witli   Iroquois,   2S;i-2S4  ;   sends   troops  to   Huron   country,   284.- 


578  INDEX. 

withdraws  garrison  from  Fort  llicholion,  285-208 ;  presented  with  a  horse, 
2m,  'i'JCt.  32»j  }iote.  380;  refuses  to  permit  election  of  syndics.  201,  326;  re- 
quested to  assume  control  of  Company  of  IIabit:ints,  201  ;  protects  captive 
Iroquois.  202  ;  encourages  llnrons,  203  ;  succeeded  by  D'Alllebout.  203,  20.S, 
32!»,  .500;  salary  of,  204;  cause  of  recall  of,  204,  208;  administration  of, 
204-2!)" ;  value  of  Algonquin  alliance  affected  by,  206,  8(53 ;  befriends  La 
Tour,  306  note;  gifts  of.  316-317;  punishes  drunl^ards,  318;  supplies  pain 
bt'nit,  318;  observes  the  New  Year,  310;  orders  salute  for  Jesuits.  322;  cedes 
lands  to  Jesuits.  323 ;  sends  moose  meat  to  Jesuits.  327 ;  entertained  by 
Jesuits,  328  ;  lights  St.  John's  fires,  ,328  ;  influence  on  social  life  of  Quebec, 
300-40(1;  buildings  of,  at  Quebec,  500. 

Montmnrenci,  Henri,  second  due  de,  Admiral  of  France,  succeeds  Conde  as  viceroy 
of  New  France.  139;  supports  Champlain,  140;  proclaimed  at  Quebec,  141; 
charters  De  Caen  '"'onipany.  146;  reputed  land  cession  of.  166;  transfers 
viceroyalty,  170  ;  conspires  against  Richelieu,  219  ;  execution  of,  219,  224.. 

Montmorenci,  falls  of,  236. 

Montpellier.     See  Martin,  Antoine. 

Montreal  (Mount  Royal,  Mile  Marie  de  Montreal),  original  country  of  the  Iro- 
quois, 54  (nee  also  Hochelaga)  ;  mentioned  by  Champlain.  72;  founding  of, 
110.  230;  trading  post.  245;  religious  community  determined  to  found  holy 
city  (Ville-Maria)  at,  270-27..  273  is,rr  aim  Company  of  Montreal)  ;  founding 
of  Villa  Maria  opposed,  271-272,  208 ;  Maisonneuve  installed  as  Governor, 
274  ;  intercourse  with  Quebec  established,  274  ;  allowed  a  syndic.  281,  280, 
200.  326  ;  appropriation  for  civil  and  military  establishment  at,  280 ;  salary 
of  Governor,  294.  299;  terrorized  by  Iroquois,  275-276.  336,  337,  347,  364, 
395  ;  Onondagas  at,  346  ;  death  and  burial  of  D'Aillebout  at.  356  ;  return  of 
French  captives  to,  358  ;  arrival  of  Dumont  at.  363-364  ;  population  of,  364, 
379 ;  earthquake  at,  367-368 ;  morality  of.  369-370 ;  court  established  at, 
374  ;  peace  conference  at,  394,  396  ;  Sulpician  rule  at,  400.  415  ;  Queylus  at. 
415;  disorder  at  fur  fairs  at,  452-453;  seminary  of  St.  Sulpice  at,  468.  484; 
church  of  the  Recollets  closed  at.  480  ;  port  of  entry,  401  ;  commercial  and 
ecclesiastical  rival  of  Quebec,  403;  source  of  prosperity  of.  512;  Histoire  de, 
271. 

Montreal  A.tsocintion  (Company  of  Montreal),  establishment  of,  270;  character 
of.  27(»-271  ;  Island  of  Montreal  granted  to.  271  ;  Olier  associate  of,  272.  400  ; 
rights  acquired  by  Sulpicians.  272.  410;  Pizeaux  desires  to  join.  273;  condi- 
tions attached  to  grant  of  Montreal  Island.  274;  confined  to  religious  func- 
tions, 280.  281  note;  exempt  from  impost,  281  note;  deputies  to  France 
chosen  from,  202;  store  in  Quebec  confiscated.  403;  character  of  charter 
granted  to.  526.  Sec  alfio  Maisonneuve,  Sulpicians. 

Montreal,  Island  of,  occupied  by  Ilurons  and  Senecas,  56  ;  granted  to  Sulpicians, 
271,  272,  274,  334,  410  ;  .lesuit  lands  on,  478. 

Monts  de  Saintonge,  Pierre  Dnfias.  Sieur  de.  Huguenot,  .joins  Chauvin's  expedi- 
tion, 70,  73  ;  commission.  73  ;  founds  Association  of  Huguenot  mercliants,  73 
{see  also  Company  of  De  Monts)  ;  undertakes  to  colonize  Acadia  on  broad 
religious  principles.  73,  106,  111:  settlers  chosen  by,  73-74;  commission  re- 
voked. 74  ;  unable  to  secure  the  aid  of  Mme.  de  Guercheville.  77  ;  abandons 
Acadia.  77,  83  ;  urged  by  Champlain  to  colonize  on  the  St.  Lawrence.  77,  83, 
91  ;  sf>nds  Champlain  to  open  the  St.  Ijawrence,  77 ;  monopolies  and  pow- 
ers granted  to,  by  concession  of  Henry  IV..  81-83  ;  commission  canceled  .and 
renewed,  S3,  103,  106;  Quebec  conspirators  sent  to,  for  punishment,  88;  peti- 
tion for  renewal  of  concession  rejected.  05,  08 ;  continues  St.  Lawrence 
settlements.  95  :  aided  by  Boulle.  99  ;  encouraged  to  expansion  by  reports  of 
St.  Lawrencf  trade.  101  ;  determines  to  buy  out  Company.  101-102;  obliged  to 
renounce  colonization  scliemes,  102;  noble  record  of,  102;  religion  of,  a  bar 


INDEX. 


579 


to  success,  103,  lOG,  204;  difliculties  of.  in  colonizing  Quebec,  lO.*?,  106;  rea- 
sons for  omitting  olei'i^y  in  St.  Ijuvvrence  colonies.  HXMO";  associated  with 
De  Caen  Companj',  124;  Canadian  colonics  of,  disapproved  by  Sully,  154; 
reason  for  failure  of,  to  colonize,  205-20G. 

Moors,  driven  frcjm  Spain,  S. 

More,  I9ir  Thomas.  Utopia  refers  to  discoverers  of  America.  12-1.3. 

Morel.  Thomas,  secular  priest,  imiM-isoned.  4;'.G,  437  ;  recalled,  446. 

Morinilt,  Caiiiain ,  arrives  at  Quebec,  224. 

Morrcl,  Captain,  arrives  at  Quebec  vvith  colonists.  125,  126. 

Mount  Desert,  Argall's  descent  upon,  76.  !)1. 

Mountain  Hill,  name,  228  ;  direction,  493  ;  houses  on,  496  ;  l)urial  ground  on,  408  ; 
defences,  503. 

Mountain  Fitrcet  (Rue  de  la  Montagne),  location  of.  87,  164,  165;  entrance  to 
palace  through.  407,  500  note. 

Moiiij,  Charles  de,  Sieur  de  la  Milleraye.  administers  oath  to  explorers.  21-22. 

y antes,  France,  claims  diocesan  rights  over  church  of  Canada.  413,  415. 

Nantes.  Fraiiee,  Edict  of.  affected  by  death  of  Henry  IV.,  112;  Richelieu  too  wise 
to  revoke.  203  ;  results  of  revocation.  203,  513,  523. 

Narantsoidat.  headquarters  of  Abenaki  mission  in  Maine,    Druillettes  at,  805. 

Natel,  Antoine,  reveals  conspiracy  to  Champlain,  87  ;  fate  of,  88. 

Kau.  Catherine  dc,  marriage  of,  335. 

Nerjahamat,  Xijcl,  Christian  Indian,  leads  war  party  against  Iroquois,  203  ;  ac 
companies  Druillettes  to  New  England,  305.  311;  returns  to  Quebec.  311; 
letter  from,  cited,  311-312;  canopy  bearer  at  FGte  de  Dien,  321;  at  council, 
350. 

Nelsoti  River,  English  fort  on.  517. 

Ncsle,  Captain,  .  arrives  at  Quebec  with  Giffard"s  colony,  235. 

Netherlands,  effect  of  Reformation  in.  62. 

Ncufres  (Neutrals),  Huron-Iroquois  tribe,  in  western  Ontario,  58. 

Ncvers,  France,  Recollets  established  at,  1 16. 

New  Amsterdam,  events  affecting  early  history  of,  62. 

NeiP  Brunswick,  coast  explored  by  Cartier,  19,  22  ;  coast  explored  by  Champlain. 
76-77. 

Neiv  England,  dissensions  of  church  and  state,  17,  63  ;  events  affecting  early  his- 
tory of,  62 ;  theological  intolerance  of,  64,  76  ;  Pequod  war  in.  03  ;  settled 
by  religious  communities,  106  ;  coast  settlement  of,  menaces  Froncli  fur  trade, 
136  ;  example  of  colonists  of.  obnoxious  to  authorities  of  New  France,  150  ; 
causes  of  antagonism  to  New  France,  160-161:  exclusion  of  Catholics  from, 
compared  to  Canadi.in  exclusion  of  Huguenots.  204-205  ;  land  tenure  of,  238  ; 
colonists  were  not  explorers,  247  :  severe  religion  of,  248  ;  sentiment  opposed 
to  white  and  Indian  marriages.  264  ;  population  of,  265.  300,  362,  381 ;  Algon- 
quins  seek  ailiance  of  New  France  against.  287-288;  expansion  of,  checked 
by  Algonquin  alliance.  296;  reciprocity  treaty  with  New  France.  200,  .304- 
305,  300-310;  Drnillettes  embassy  to,  303;  autocracy  of  ministers  in,  304; 
Confederation  of,  30S,  309-310  ;  ruthlessness  toward  Indians.  3(i0  ;  alarmed 
by  French  expansion,   800  ;   punishment  of  witchcraft   in.  425. 

Newfoundland,  early  knowledge  of  fisheries  of,  10.  28,  65;  explored  by  Cartier.  10. 
22  ;  increasing  importance  of  fisheries.  68.  60-70  ;  powers  granted  to  I-a  Roche 
in,  70  :  claimed  by  English,  136  :  boundary  limit  of  lands  ceded  to  Company 
of  Hundred  Associates,  208;  granted  to  Alexander,  211  note:  importance  of, 
383,  .301  ;  History,  cited,  36-.37. 

New  France,  ecclesiastical  domination  in.  17.  63;  named  by  Cartier.  30.  4  7;  re- 
named by  Roberval.  52;  llurons  in  history  of.  58.  62;  influence  of  Iroquois  in 
history  of,  62  ;  absolutism  in,  62-63,  161,  220-221  ;  Huguenots  excluded  from. 
64,   204;   bureaucratic  system   of,    130;   appanage   of  commercial    companies. 


S8o 


INDEX. 


155;  antagonism  to  New  England,  161  ;  advent  of  Jesuits,  171  ;  list  of  arma- 
ment tor  defence  of,  10G-]".)7  :  Kronch  ijopulation  of,  at  period  of  Kirlie's  occu- 
pation, 200  ;  appeals  for  representative  government,  287  ;  alliance  with  Algon- 
quins.  287,  288  :  receives  concessions  from  home  government,  203-294  ;  devel- 
opment arrested  by  Montmagny.  200  ;  value  of  Algonquin  alliance  to,  296  ; 
negotiations  with  New  England  for  reciprocity  treaty,  299,  805,  310-311  ;  a 
crown  colony,  372;  population  (1666)  379.  See  also  Canada,  Companies, 
Eeudalism.  Fur  trade.  .Jesuits.  KecoUets. 

New  Hartford  Colony,  planted  by  Hooker,  76. 

New  Haven  Colony,  established  by  Davenport,  76;  member  of  New  England  Con- 
federation, 308,  310. 

Neio  Netherlands,  narrow  colonization  policy  of,  85,  155  ;  colonists  lack  enterprise, 
247. 

Newport,  Christopher,  leaves  colonists  on  James  Island,  157. 

New  Spain,  monastic  orders  in,  17. 

New  York,  people  and  government  of,  361  ;  plans  for  conquest  of,  361,  396. 

Niagara  Rirer,  Iroquois  boundary,  56. 

Nicholas  III.,  Pope,  modifies  rules  of  St.  Francis. 

Nicolas,  ,  signs  petition  to  king,  153;  oflice  of.  154. 

Nicolct,  Oilles,  secular  priest,  arrives  in  Canada,   252-253,  407. 

Nicolet,  Jean,  interpreter  and  explorer,  referred  to,  252,  270. 

Noel  (Indian  chief).     Sec  Negabamat. 

Noel,  Etienne,  nephew  of  Cartler,  44. 

Noel,  Jacques,  nephew  of  Cartier,  letters  by,  24,  51,  68;  loses  trading  privileges, 
68-69,  79. 

Noel,  John,  grandnephew  of  Cartier,  51. 

Noel,  Michael,  grandnephew  of  Cartier,  51. 

Noiret  (Noyrot),  Philihert,  Jesuit,  arrives  in  Canada,  174;  quarrels  with  Caen 
and  L.T  Ralde,  179. 

Nolan,  Catherine,  represents  Delino  in  Compagnie  du  Nord,  534,  536. 

"  Nonesuch,"  Boston  ship,  reaches  Hudson  Bay,  516. 

Nopee.     See  Mezeray. 

Noremheyue  (district  covering  part  of  Maine  and  New  Brunswick),  granted  to 
Roberval.  41.  79. 

Normnnd,  Etienne  Jonquet,  marries  Ann  Ilamel,  125. 

Normandy,  daring  of  fishermen  of.  19,  65;  merchants  of,  oppose  monopolies,  95. 
98  ;  settlers  from,  in  Canada,  264  ;  free  traders  from,  268  ;  grounds  of  epis 
copal  claims  upon  Canada.  410  note. 

Norsemen,  potential  colonization  of,  13. 

Northwest  Passrt(/e,  search  for,  9,  15,  270. 

Notary,  position  of,  in  Canada,  506  note. 

Notre  Dame  de  Beaujwrt,  stream  of,  236. 

Notre  Dame  de  la  Foye,  Jesuit  mission,  Hurons  removed  to.  352.     Sec  also  St.  Foy. 

Notre  Dame  de  la  Recourernnce,  built  by  Champlain  in  fulfillment  of  vow.  230. 
240;  site  of.  230.  240-241.  404;  burned,  231,  241,  242.  260,  420;  funeral 
services  of  Champlain  held  in.  240  ;  question  of  the  tomi)  of  Champlain  in. 
241-242;  Champlain's  bequest  to,  242-243;  Montmagny  inaugurated  in,  245; 
enlarged.  252;  uuns  ar,  261. 

Notre  Dame  de  la  Victoire.  site  of,  87,  117,  164;  dedicated  (by  St.  Vallier)  to 
commemorate  the  defeat  of  Phipps,  398,  496 ;  rededicated  on  Walker's  defeat, 
398. 

Notre  Dame  de  Quebec,  register  cited,  19S. 

Notre  Dame  dcs  Angcs  (RecoUet).  site  of,  142;  cornerstone  laid  by  D'Olbeau,  142; 
description  of,  142-14.'';  transferred  to  St.  Vallior.  143.  443;  to  serve  as 
seminary  for  Indians,  143  ;  gifts  to,  144  ;  completion  of,  144  ;  shelters  Jesuits, 


INDEX.  581 

172  ;  Beauport  murder  announoed  at,  ISO-lSl  ;  approach  of  English  roported 
at,  108  ;  visited  by  the  Kiri^es,  107  ;  devastated  by  English,  22:i-2i;3  ;  restora- 
tion and  growth   or,  44L'. 

Notre  Dame  des  Ainn.s-  (eliapel  on  .Jesuit  residence),  mentioned.  172;  Beauport 
murder  announced  at,  180-1  SI  ;  approach  of  English  reported  at,  10.3;  visited 
by  the  Kirkcs,  107;  Protestant  minister  confined  in,  218-210;  devastated  by 
English,  212;  polemical  discussions  at,  240-2.")0 ;  Huron  pupils  of.  li.'il-li'j.'j ; 
burned,  2fiO  ;  road  to.  201  ;  hoiting  of,  .'{17  ,  feast  of  St.  Michael  celebrated  at, 
328;  description  of,  475  471!. 

T^otre  Dame  des  Aiifjcs  and  St.  Vliarhs,  population  of,  870. 

Notie,  Anne  de,  .Tesuit,  arrives  in  Canada,  174;  complains  of  Huguenots,  177;  ac- 
companies Brebeuf  on  Huron  mission,  177;  Lalemant  desires  to  keep  In  Can- 
ada,  179. 

Nouveau, ,  in  Company  of  de  Caen,  20G. 

Nova  Seotia,  French  posts  in,  liarried  by  English,  01  ;  grant  of.  211  note. 

O'DonncU,  ■ ,  said  to  have  found  burial  place  of  Champlain,  240. 

Ohio,  explored  by  I.a  Salle.  300. 

Oka,  Que.,  Indian  population  of,  370  )tote. 

Olbcau,  Jean  d',  Recollet.  chosen  for  Canadian  mission,  111  ;  arrives  at  Quebec, 
112;  site  of  chapel  built  by,  117,  223;  celebrates  first  mass  at  Queliec.  117- 
118;  with  Montagnais,  110;  at  Quebec,  JIO,  120,  122,  130;  at  Three  Uivers, 
120;  seeks  aid  in  France  for  mission,  125,  127;  returns  to  Quebec.  127;  lays 
cornerstone  of  convent  (Notre  Dame  des  Anges),  142. 

OJier,  Jean  Jacques,  priest,  founds  Seminary  of  St.  Sulpice,  272,  400  ;  character 
and  work  of,  400-410  ;  Jouinee  Chretienne,  412. 

Oliva,  Jean  Paul,  general  of  .Jesuits,  letter  to,  cited,  4G0. 

Olive,  Jean  (Peter  John  de  Oliva),  founder  of  sub-order  of  Franciscans  called 
Spirituales,  113. 

Olivier.     8ee  I.e  Tardif. 

Oneida  Lake,  boundary  of  Onondaga  territory,  50. 

Oneidas,  Iroquois  tribe  belonging  to  league,  deputies  from,  350  ;  fighting  strength 
of,  3G1. 

Ononduijas,  Iroquois  tribe  belonging  to  league,  early  home  of.  50  ;  send  delegates 
to  Quebec,  338,  341-342.  34G ;  welcome  .Jesuits,  342 ;  destroy  Eries.  342; 
French  colony  settled  among.  342,  343,  401  ;  take  Ilurons  from  Montreal. 
346  ;  escape  of  French  colonists  from,  347,  368  ;  war  against  French,  347  ; 
ask  for  peace.  358;  fighting  strength  of.  361. 

Onontio  (gre.'it-mountain),  Indian  name  for  French  Governors  from  the  time  of 
Montmagny,  267,  200. 

Orleans,  Jean  Baptiste  Gaston,  Due  d',  revolt  of,  210. 

Ottawa  Riier  (River  des  I'rairies),  po.ssible  attempt  of  Cartier  to  ascend,  44; 
origin  of  Indians  on,  52  ;  Huron  line  of  flight,  61  ;  explored  by  Champlain, 
100,  118  ;  center  of  fur  trade.  117  ;  priest  drowned  in.  175-176;  Iroquois  check 
French  trade  on,  268  ;  Iroquois  route  to,  275  ;  temporary  security  of.  286 ; 
infested  by  Iroquois,  202-203.  302. 

Ottairas,  Algonquin  tribe,  sought  by  St.  Malo  and  Rochelle  traders,  108;  Lauzon 
attempts  to  settle  French  colony  among,  343  ;  Iroquois  inimical  to,  343  ;  am- 
bushed by  Mohawks  while  conducting  French.  344. 

Oudiettc,  Nicolas,  farmer  of  the  revenue,  commercial  ruin  of.  521. 

Oullain,  — • — ,  Recollet  brother,  captured  by  Iroquois,  166. 

Oxen,  scarcity  of,  201  ;  mode  of  harnessing,  500. 

Paeault   (PascatHl).  Antoine,  witness   In  suit  against   Oitton,   532. 

Parhot,  Franqois  Vienne,  in  suit  against  Oitton.  531.  534.  535.  536. 

Paddy  (Padis),  William.  Kennebec  trader.  307,  307  note. 

Pain  benit  (consecrated  bread),  distribution  of,  318,  401;  preparation  of,  320; 
provided  by  soldiers.  424. 


gSz  INDEX. 

Palace  Hill,  origin  of  name.  499. 

Paris.  France,    Parliament   of,    confirms    rights    of   Breton   traders,    127 ;    Kirkes 

burned  in  effigy  at,  193  ;  Arcliivcs  de  cited.  539. 
Parkman,  Francin,  referred  to,  3  31,  522. 
Paste  de  chouan,  Pierre,  Montagnais  conrert,  memories  of,  59  note. 

Patu, ,  shareliolder  in  Comi>agnie  du  Nord,  534.  535. 

Paul  v.,  Tope.  143. 

Peas    (pease),   food  supply  at   Quebec,   1S2,   180,   189;  method  of  grinding,   187; 

distribution  of,  329. 
Pilerin,  Philippe,  secular  priest,  arrives  in  Canada,  408. 
Penn,  William,  schemes  of  federation,  525. 
Pequemains.  a  fabulous  race,  37. 
Peqvod  war,  not  due  to  French   and   Indian   alliance,   93  ;    Connecticut   In,   310  ; 

neutrality  of  Iroquois  during,  311. 
Perc.  Jean,  sent  to  Lake  Superior  to  look  for  copper,  386. 
Perrot,  Franc,ois  Marie.   Governor   of  Montreal,    imprisoned   by    Frontenac.    455 : 

violence  of  Frontennc  due  to  jealousy  of,  455-456  ;  gains  by  fur  trade,  523. 
Perrot,  Nicolas,  interpreter  and  explorer,  gives  origin  of  Huron-Iroquois  feud.  54- 

55,  59 ;  in  Canada  during  Kirke"s  occupation,  198  ;  sent  to  establish  trading 

posts,  390. 
Pertfiuis,  Francois,  coureur  de  iois,  text  of  contract,  536,  538. 
Petit,  Captain.     Fiee  T.e  Petit. 
"Petite  Hermine,"  Cartier's  ship,  dimensions  of,  25;  finding  of,  26;  abandonment 

of.   26.   37. 
Petite  Riviere.     See  St.  Charles  River. 
Petition  of  Rights,  signed  by  Charles  II..  212. 
Petrohriisians.  religious  orders  organized  against,  114. 
Petroleum,  first  information  given  of,  by  Boucher.  511. 

Petuns  fTiontates.  Tobacco  Nation),  Huron-Iroquois  tribe,  early  home  of.  58. 
Phipps,  Sir  WiUiant;  takes  Port   Royal.   .396 ;    attempt  on   Quebec.   390.   397 :   re- 
treats, 397-398  :  commemoration  day,  in  Quebec.  398  :  churcli  of  Notre  Dame 

de  la  Victoire  built.  308,  496  ;  result  of  invasion,  399. 
Picart.  ^fme.     See  Garemand. 

Pijart,  Claude,  supersedes  Poncet  ,414  ;  criticises  Queylus,  414. 
Pillings,  .James  C,  cued,  53. 

Pinaut.   .   5.38. 

I'inel,  Gilles,  attacked  by  Iroquois,  337. 

Pinel,  Nicolas,  attacked  by  Iroquois,  337. 

Pinet.     See  Poncet. 

Piravlie  (Piraiihe).  ViOrtial.  wr'tos  piny,  269. 

Pivert.  Nicola.'i,  early  colonist.  169,  223. 

Pizeaux  (Fiiiseaux),  Pierre  de,  desires  to  ioin  Montreal  association,  273;  repents 

of  sift,  273. 
Plains  of   ihraham,  origin  of  name,  198;  site  of,  223. 
Plaisance,  .^vangour  advises  against  cession  of,  362. 
Platon  River,  .Tesuit  wounded  at,  337. 
Plymouth,  Enr/.,  religious  colonists  sail  from.  261. 
Plymouth.  }i'ass..  Druillettes  at.  307. 
Plymouth  Colony,  political  problems  in,  03  ;  tlicological  dissensions  of,  76  :  treaty 

negotiations  with  Quebec.  303,  308.  309-310;  Kennebec  Indians  in  jurisdiction 

of.  307;  conditions  of  French  alliance  with,  311. 
Pointe  Aux  Aloucttrs,  meeting  of  Champiain  and  Caen  at,  150. 
Pointe  AuT  Lievres,  .Tesuit  cattle  farm  on.  322-323. 
Pointe  Avx  Pi.reau  CPuiseaux),  Maisonneuve  at,  273. 
Poiton.  France,  fishermen  from,  at  Great  Banks,  19-21. 


INDEX.  583 

Polo,  Marco,  regarded  as  a  mj'th,  7. 

Ponimier, ,  secular  priest,  pronoiiuces  decree  of  excommunication  against  De 

Mezy,  430;  arrives  at  (Juelicc,  4G(;. 

Poncet,  Joseph  Antoinc,  ilc  hi  Niirihc.  arrives  in  Canada,  ■Jfil-2G2;  captured  by 
Iroquois,  337;  excliangod,  338;  cure  of  ()ueliec,  414;  removed  by  De  Caen, 
414. 

Pontchartrain,  Louis  Pheljjiicaux,  Comte  de.  La  ^larche  complains  to,  4S5 ;  T^rsu- 
lines  complain  to,  .504. 

Ponfiirare  (Du  Pout.  Sieur  de  Oravt"').  FraiK^ois.  St.  Malo  merchant,  associated 
with  Cliauvin,  70.  72:  establishes  tr.'ide  at  Tadousac,  70,  71,  72;  commands 
De  Chasle's  expedition,  72  ;  joined  by  ("hamplain,  72  ;  arrives  at  tjuebec,  73  ; 
conducts  De  Mouts's  colonists  to  I'ort  Royal,  73-74  ;  commands  ship  in  De 
Monts'.s  St.  I^awrence  expedition,  77  ;  wounded  by  free  traders.  78  ;  at  Tadou- 
sac, 78,  88,  04,  09,  iOl,  112.  132;  at  trial  of  conspirators,  88:  talces  prisoners 
to  France,  88 ;  to  continue  fur  trade,  95-06 ;  accompanies  Champlaln  to 
France,  98;  near  old  Ilochelaga,  100;  brings  Recollets  to  Canada,  112  ;  meets 
Champlain,  118,  119;  at  Queliec.  120,  130,  141,  102-163,  164,  179;  to  super- 
sede Champl.nin  at  Quebec,  136-137;  sails  for  Canada,  137,  140;  relations 
with  Champlain,  137,  150;  aids  Recollets.  142;  at  Three  Rivers,  14."),  149; 
sails  for  France,  145-146.  152,  164,  178:  advises  Champlain.  181-182:  refuses 
to  sail  "  Le  Coquin,"  190  ;  saved  humiliation  of  surrender,  195  ;  embarks  for 
France,  199;  arrives  with  commercial  treaty,  281. 

Popliam,  Hir  JoJni.  colony  of,  156. 

]'ort  nelson,  aid  sought  by  Compagnie  de  la  Baye  d'lludson  against  English  near, 
529. 

Port  Royal,  Argall's  descent  upon.  76  ;  attempt  to  maintain  freedom  of  worship  at, 
111  ;  restored  to  France.  215  :  captured  by  Phipps,  390. 

Portugal,  her  maritime  and  commercial  enterprise,  7-8  ;  afl'ected  by  Bull  of  de- 
marcation, 14,  16;  colonizes  Brazil,  14;  northern  expeditions  of,  15;  daring 
of  fishermen  from,  19-20,  65;  early  commercial  companies  of,  00-67.  See  also 
Commercial  Companies. 

Potardiere,  ..  report  on  iron  ores,  385. 

Poutriiicourt.  Jean  de  Birneourt,  Sieur  de,  associated  with  De  Monte,  73,  90 ; 
action  of  rival  traders  against.  97  :  overshadows  De  ^lonts,  102. 

Ponnall,  Thomas.  Administrntion  of  the  Colonics,  525  note. 

Prelatists.  contentions  of.  17  ;  theocracy  of.  304. 

Prevot,  Martin,  house  burned,  351. 

Prince  Edward  Island,  sighted  by  Cartier.  22. 

Prince  Rupert's  Land,  origin  of  name,  516. 

Prince  Rupert's  Ifircr,  Radisson  and  Grosseilliers  at,  516. 

Print inii  press,  absence  of.  in  Canada.  513. 

Prirateers,  English,  instructions  to,  211  note:  in  treaty  of  Suze,  212  note. 

Propaganda,  cited,  479. 

Protestants,  dissensions  of,  in  New  England,  70 ;  devoid  of  missionary  spirit, 
106-107:  excluded  from  New  France,  220.     Sec  also  Huguenots. 

Provence,  annexed  to  Franco.  15. 

Provost,  ,  sells  land,  497. 

Prowse,  Daniel  Woodimrtj,  JJistory  of  yeicfoimdland  cited,  86-37. 

Pueblos,  Spanish  missions  among,  264. 

Pmsieux.  ,  secretary  of  the  king,  writes  to  Champlain,  146,  152. 

Punishments,  for  theft.  47-48,  329 ;  for  conspiracy,  88 :  for  offence  In  carnival 
week,  231  ;  for  drunkards,  252,  318.  327  ;  for  refractory  servant,  316  :  for  sale  of 
brandy,  360.  365.  425-426 ;  for  robbery  and  arson.  366.  368.  428  ;  for  eating 
meat  in  Lent.  374  note;  for  practise  of  magic,  374  note,  425:  for  irreverence. 
374  note;  for  bachelors,  380-381:  for  blasphemy,  403;  for  heresy.  425:  for 
traveling  to  the  Hudson  without  a  permit,  492. 


584  INDEX. 

Puritans,  contentions  of,  17;  motives  and  development.  158-159,  204-205;  liber- 
ality, 190  ;  not  drawn  to  exploration.  247  :  theocracy  of,  304. 

Quart~  cnjuials,  mistalien  for  diamonds.  44,  45,  47,  324. 

Quebec,  history  of.  exemplifies  transition  from  fendalism  to  representative  gov- 
ernment, 18;  first  seen  by  Europeans,  24  (see  also  Stadacona)  ;  foimded,  51, 
78,  83,  86 ;  Algonquin  name  superseded  by  Iroquois  name,  55,  72,  78,  SG ; 
origin  of  name.  55  note;  Champlain  builds  post  at.  78  (see  also  HaJjitation 
de  Quebec)  ;  events  of  1608  at.  86-90  ;  effect  of  French-Huron  alliance  on, 
90-91  ;  Montaignais  at.  94  ;  in  charge  of  Chavin.  04  ;  in  charge  of  Du  Pare, 
98;  Champlain  at.  101  ;  beginning  of  second  period,  104-105;  slow  growth  of, 
107,  158;  headquarters  of  free  trade,  110;  Recollets  at,  111-112.  115.  117, 
119,  120.  121,  130.  142;  .lesuits  at.  115.  172,  174,  232.  252-253,  315-316; 
topography  in  1615.  117-118;  arrival  of  colonists,  119;  view  of,  in  1616; 
arrival  of  Heberts,  125.  famine  at  (1617),  126,  130,  (1627)  180-192;  threat- 
ened by  Indians.  128-130,  180-181.  255;  death  of  Scotchman  at.  132-133; 
Champlain  to  build  fort  at.  140  (see  also  Fort  St.  Louis)  ;  Champlain  returns 
with  family  to.  141  ;  a  royal  colony,  141,  158  ;  building  of  Recollet  convent, 
142-143  (see  also  Notre  Dame  des  Anges)  ;  condition  in  1620,  142-143,  144- 
146;  conflicting  traders  in,  146.  224  (see  also  Commercial  Companies)  ;  peti- 
tions Louis  XIII. .  152-153:  civil  government  organized,  154;  stagnation  of, 
162.  176-177;  building  at.  164-105;  Mme.  Champlain  at.  167;  events  of  1624, 
177-178;  in  fear  of  English.  179-192;  English  fleet  arrives  at.  193;  surrender 
of.  194-197.  213:  families  in.  during  Kirke's  occupation.  198;  Kirkes  at,  199; 
abandoned  by  English,  214.  215.  219.  221  ;  during  Kirke's  occupation.  218- 
219;  in  treaty  of  St.  Germain.  221-222;  condition  at  restoration.  222-224; 
from  trading  post  to  town.  224,  243  ;  return  of  Champlain  to.  228  ;  Hurons 
at,  228-229,  245  ;  chapel  built  in  commemoration  of  restoration.  230-231  (see 
also  Notre  Dame  de  la  Recouvrance)  ;  piety  of.  231.  244-245;  seat  of  feudal- 
Ism,  2.34.  238  239.  493  note  (see  also  Feudal  system)  ;  social  life  of.  238- 
239,  301,  399-400,  401-402.  404.  405-406  ;  burial  of  Champlain  at.  240-241 ; 
fires  at  (1640).  241,  316.  (1650)  282.  (1701)  482;  arrival  of  Montmagny, 
244-245  ;  threatened  by  Iroquois.  246-247.  266  :  effect  of  arrival  of  fleet  at, 
247-248:  observance  of  church  festivals.  248-249,  253.  255-256,  263.  317-318, 
319.  320.  321-322  327,  328.  331.  341-342:  pictured  by  Le  .Teune.  251  ;  hospital 
founded  at.  257  (see  also  Hotel-Dieu)  ;  arrival  of  nuns  at.  261-262  ;  Ursuline 
convent  at.  261.  282:  birth  of  Louis  XIV.  celebrated.  263.  269-270;  English 
traveler  at.  270  ;  arrival  of  Mile.  Mance.  271-272  ;  hospitality  of.  271  ;  inter- 
course with  Montreal  e.'Stablished,  274  :  terrorized  liy  Iroquois.  275-276.  288, 
331.  336,  343,  344,  347.  350-351.  35.3-355.  357,  364;  arrival  of  D'Aillebout  at, 
277  ;  opposed  to  trade  restrictions,  280  :  allowed  a  s.vndic.  281.  289.  299.  326  ; 
revolt  in.  286-287 :  Council  to  meet  at,  289 ;  Bourdon  elected  syndic,  291  ; 
D'Aillebout  returns  to,  293  :  fugitive  Hurons  at,  299.  302-303.  342.  351-352, 
368-369;  Druillettes  leaves,  305.  310;  La  Tour  at.  306;  return  of  Druillettes, 
311  ;  winter  of  1646,  325;  events  of  1647.  326-327;  events  of  1649,  329-330; 
events  of  1650,  330-331  ;  under  Lauzon.  335-336  ;  apprehensions  of  Jesuit  In- 
fluence in.  .340;  population,  (1653)  342.  (1666)  379.  (1681)  381;  Mohawk 
deputation  at.  345  ;  reception  of  D'Argenson,  348  ;  captive  Iroquois  at.  348. 
349,  35,3-3.54.  355;  arrival  of  Laval,  351.  419.  420.  436;  frequency  of  fires 
'  in,  351  :  typhoid  at,  352-353  ;  French  Governors  buried  at.  356.  431  :  census, 
(1660)  357  note,  (1681)  463.  464-465,  498;  Cayuga  deputation  at.  358;  pro- 
tected by  ^Montreal.  364  ;  .jealous  of  Montreal,  365.  493  :  earthquake  at.  366- 
367 ;  Onondaga  deput.ation  at.  346.  358 ;  or  immorality  of.  369- 
370  (see  also  Punishments)  ;  Sovereign  Council  at,  373  ;  Carignan-Sali&res 
regiment  at.  378.  379,  400.  404  ;  from  village  to  town.  379,  436  ;  industrial 
activity  of,   386;   famous  men   at.   387.   507;   return  of  Frontenac,   396;  be- 


INDEX. 


58  s 


sieged  by  riiipps,  896-398,  5U1-5U2,  Oua ;  repulse  of  Phipps  commemorated, 
398  (s'ec  also  Notre  Dame  dc  la  Victoire)  ;  final  capture,  398  note;  secular 
clergy  of,  401  ;  Tartuffc  to  bo  presented  at.  401-403;  Queylus  at,  416;  civil 
and  ecclesiastical  conliict  in.  430  (ncv  ulsu  Laval)  ;  tithe  question  in,  446 
(see  also  Tithes)  ;  brandy  controversy  in,  453  (sec  also  Liquor  tradic)  ;  first 
seat  of  learning  in  America,  402  ;  Jesuit  estates  in,  478  ;  Laval  University 
founded,  484 ;  General  Hospital  established,  484 ;  Laval's  census  of  1681, 
491-492;  a  mercantile  depot,  492,  512;  topography  of,  493-500,  495-496  note- 
pictured  by  La  Potherie.  490  ;  occupied  by  Arnold,  499  ;  fortifications  of,  502, 
503,  504  {see  also  Chateau  St.  Louis,  Fort  St.  Louis)  ;  Walker's  attempt  on, 
398,  504;  "  (Jibraltar  of  America,"  504;  tradesmen  at,  507;  commercial  im- 
portance, 507-508;  fire  regulations.  509,  510;  establishment  of  ferry,  510; 
customs  of,  510-511;  sources  of  prosperity,  512;  card  currency  in,  522;  ex- 
ports of,  522 ;  procvs  verbal  of  conference  held  at,  529-532.  Sec  also  Com- 
mercial companies. 

Quebec  Actj  cited,  449. 

Quebec,  District  of,  courts  established,  374. 

Quebec  Literary  and  Hifitorkal  Society,  destruction  of  relics  belonging  to,  26. 

Quebec  Palace,  burned,  499;  rebuilt,  499;  site  of,  499-500. 

Quebec,  Parish  of,  extent,  445;  tithes  imposed  on,  445-446;  supplied  by  Seminary, 
483-484  note. 

Quebec  Parish  churches,  117,  223,  230,  321,  322,  327,  331  ;  designed  as  a  basilica, 
419-420,  494. 

Queen  Anne's  War,  17. 

Quen,  Jean,  de,  Jesuit,  labors  in  Quebec,  252  ;  journey,  327  ;  death,  353  ;  Superior 
of  missions,  414  ;  removes  Poncet,  414  ;  criticises  Queylus,  415. 

Quentin,  Claude,  Jesuit,  procurer  of  Canadian  missions,  delegate  to  France,  287; 
at  Quebec,  316. 

Queylus,  Gabriel,  Abbe  de,  Sulpician,  controversy  with  Jesuits,  351 ;  at  Quebec, 
358,  416  ;  quarrel  with  Laval,  360  ;  removes  Vignal,  408  ;  created  grand  vicar, 
409-410,  413;  authority  recognized  by  Jesuits,  414;  character  of,  414;  sues 
Jesuits,  414-415  ;  dines  witli  Jesuits,  415  ;  attitude  on  brandy  question,  41'5  ; 
leaves  Quebec,  415  ;  at  Montreal,  415  ;  represents  diocesan  claim  of  Rouen, 
416;  leaves  Canada,  416;  returns  to  Montreal,  416;  ordered  to  leave  the  col- 
ony, 418-419  ;  parishes  organized  by,  421. 

Quietism,  suppressed  in  Canada.  220,  418  :  Bernieres  suspected  of,  412. 

Racine,  Jean,  Mithridate,  given  at  Quebec,  402. 

RadcUffe  (RatcUffc),  John,  arrival  at  Jamestowu,  157. 

Badissoii,  Pierre  Esprit,  explorer  and  trader,  515  ;  offers  to  open  Hudson  Bay 
region,  515;  fined  in  (Canada,  516;  interests  English,  516;  patronized  by 
Prince  Rupert,  516  ;  leads  successful  expedition,  510  ;  pardoned  and  employed 
by  French,  518  ;  treachery  to  Compaguie  du  Nord,  519,  530;  forbids  French  to 
trade  with  Indians,  520. 

Rageot,  Francois,  witness.  538. 

Rayeot,  Oilles,  notary,  532. 

Rar/xicnau,  Paul,  Jestiit.  leads  fugitive  Ilurons  to  Quebec,  302-303;  succeeds  Lale- 
mant,  331 ;  report  on  Jesuit  college,  409  ;  Journal  dcs  Jesuits,  328. 

Raleigh,  Sir  M'alter,  results  of  colonization  schemes,  84;  charter  granted  to,  84; 
fate  of  colony  of,  91. 

Rapin, ,  Provincial  of  Recollets,  arrives  in  Canada,  271. 

Ratisson.     See  Radisson. 

Ray,  Pierre,  stigmatized  by  Cliamplain,   195. 

Raymbault,  Charles,  Jesuit,  buried  beside  Champlain,  242. 

Raymbaut,  Captain  .  pursues  Iroquois,  240. 

Razilly,  Claude  de.  Seigneur  de  Launay.  I'rench  admiral,  commissioned  to  ijuccol 
*    Quebec,  221. 


586  INDEX, 

RecoUet  church,  Canadian  Goremors  buried  in,  356;  site  of,  442,  443,  4D5,  498; 
conditions  imposed  on.  by  Laval.  442,  443  ;  development  of,  443  ;  bombarded 
by  English.  408  :  burning  of.  498-499. 

RecoUtts  (Reformed  Fathers  of  St.  Frnncis),  rename  the  St.  Croix  River  in  honor 
of  Charles  des  Boues,  25,  144  ;  established  at  Quebec,  111,  115,  4U8  ;  organiza- 
tion of  order,  114,  115;  hampered  by  poverty.  115,  170-171.  36S  ;  slietch  of, 
115-117;  unable  to  hold  real  estate  yielding  revenue,  115,  116,  171  ;  celebrate 
first  mass  in  Canada,  117-118;  record  early  history  of  the  colony,  118-120, 
133,  134,  164  ;  silence  regarding  Champlain,  120.  133,  134,  135  ;  at  Quebec, 
122,  125,  130,  142-144,  163  ;  in  France.  122  ;  Conde's  gift  to,  139  ;  angered  by 
free  traders.  141  ;  industry  of,  142  ;  site  of  monastery,  142  (see  also  Notre 
Dame  des  Anges)  :  transfer  property  to  Saint  Vallier,  148;  authorized  to 
perform  functions  of  secular  clergy.  143,  407  ;  furnish  men  to  garrison  fort, 
]48:  quarrel  with  Huguenots,  163.  170;  convent  attacked  by  Iroquois,  166- 
167;  distrust  Jesuits,  171-172;  hospitality  to  Jesuits,  172;  isolation  of,  174; 
inspire  Jesuits,  178;  called  to  attend  council,  180-181;  desire  to  continue 
Canada  mission,  184,  197;  return  to  France,  186;  to  hold  Indian  suspects, 
190 ;  apprised  of  descent  of  English,  193 ;  English  agree  to  protect  property 
of.  195;  urged  by  Kirke  to  remain  in  Canada,  198;  return  to  France,  199, 
410 ;  land  under  cultivation,  200 ;  number  in  Canada,  200  ;  superseded  bj 
Jesuits,  207  ;  tui'U  property  over  to  Jesuits.  223  ;  fate  of  chapel,  230  ;  desired 
by  the  people,  279,  439.  440  :  to  offset  Jesuits,  385.  489  ;  oppose  Jesuits,  388- 
389  ;  favored  by  La  Salle,  389-390  ;  re-established  in  Canada,  439.  440,  441 
shipv.-recked,  440  ;  partisans  of  Frontenac,  441  ;  accumulate  property,  442 
lands  granted  to,  442,  495  ;  restore  monastery  and  build  hospice.  442-443 
religions  toleration  of,  443  note;  Montreal  church  closed  by  Saint  Vallier, 
489  ;  refuse  to  labor  on  public  works,  505. 

Bed  River  8eitleriteiit,  123. 

Reformation  (The),  issues  of.  transferred  to  America,  62-64;  cause  of.  abandoned 
by  Henry  IV.,  201  ;  in  France,  202. 

Relioion,  contradictory  elements  of,  260.  See  also  Roman  Catholic  Church,  Hugue- 
nots, Jesuits.  Retollets. 

Renan,  Joseph  Ernest,  cited,  410-411. 

Rcnnes,  France,  Parliament  of.  refuses  to  incorporate  Company  of  Morbihan,  205. 

Renouard,  Marie,  marries  Robert  Giffard,  235. 

RensellacrnicJC:     See  Albany. 

Repentiyny,  ,  with  Carignan-Salieres  regiment.  378. 

Repentignji,  Pierre  Le  Gardnir,  Sieur  de,  arrives  in  Canada,  251,  279;  deputy  to 
France.  279 ;  superseded.  293  ;  death  of.  293  ;  admiral  of  fleet,  316. 

Restigouehe.  Que.,  Indian  population  of.  370  note. 

Uevue  Canadienne  de  Montreal,  289    note. 

Reye,  Pierre,  signs  petition  to  king,  153. 

Rhode  Island,  founding  of.  76. 

Rhodes,  Cecil,  compared  with  La  Salle.  50S  ;  company  established  by.  527-528. 

Rihaut  (Rihaiilt),  Jean.  Huguenot,  destruction  of  colony  of,  68,  244. 

"Richard  of  Pli/movth ,"  ship  of  Plymouth  company,  156. 

Richelieu,  Armayid  Jean  du  Plessis,  Cardinal.  Due  de,  colonial  policy,  123,  137-138, 
203-204.  205.  207,  220-221,  332;  absolutism  of,  187.  138.  201.  207;  Cham- 
plain's  faith  in.  184-185 :  statecraft  of.  202-208 :  crushes  Huguenots.  203, 
211 ;  injures  French  commerce,  203  :  excludes  Huguenots  from  New  France, 
204,  220  :  restricts  trade,  204  ;  uses  Jesuits,  204  ;  Minister  of  Commerce  and 
Navigation,  205  ;  organizes  Company  of  Morbihan,  205  ;  Viceroy  of  Canada. 
206;  comm_ercial  policy.  206.  281,  305;  alliance  with  Protestants,  207,  220; 
charters  Company  of  Hundred  Associates,  207.  209  ;  appoints  Lauzon  intend- 
ant  of  company,  210,  333-334;  generous  to  conquered  Huguenots.  213;  grants 


INDEX. 


587 


renewal  oJ  ■"'•ading  privileges  to  Caen,  HlH.  liiil,  222;  destroys  feudal  power  in 
France,  220  ;  establishes  feudalism  in  New  France,  234,  23.S  ;  confirms  Mont- 
magny.  244  :  intluences  Mme.  de  C'omhallet.  '2'>7  ;  fort  named  for,  274  ;  river 
named  for.  274,  332;  d>-bt  of  Canada  to,  270;  death  of,  270;  organizes  navy, 
332  ;  rapids  named  for.  332.     fe'cc  aho  Commercial  Companies. 

Richelieu  liapids,  origin  of  name,  332.     .SVe  also  Chambly  Rapids. 

Richelieu  River  (Chambly.  Riviere  des  Iroquois,  Sorel),  descrilied  by  Champlaln, 
72,  99  ;  Indians  desert  at,  92 ;  Champlain  meets  Ilurons  at,  07  ;  Iroquois  on, 
245,  246,  392,  395  ;  origin  of  name,  274,  332. 

Rivard,  ,  superintendent  of  Jesuit  Estates,  report  of,  478. 

River  Xcmi-skan.  .Toliet  authorized  to  take  possession  of,  519-520. 

River  of  Canada.    See  St.  Lawrence. 

Ririrrc  au.v  Livrrcs.     Sec  Brook  St.   i\Iichel. 

Riiirre  de  St.  Charles,  census  of,  357  note. 

Riviere  dcs  Prairies.     See  Ottawa. 

Roads,  site  of  Beaupoi-t  in  Cartier's  day,  25 ;  between  Chateau  St.  Louis  and 
habitation,  164-165;  narrowness  of,  327,  327-238;  between  Quebec  and  Mont- 
real, 492-493  ;  course  and  development  of  early  Quebec,  495-496  note,  497- 
498;  stairway  between  Lower  and  Lpper  Town,  510. 

Robcrije,  Denis,  witness  in  suit  against  Gitton,  532. 

Roberral,  Jean  Francois  de  la  Roque,  Sieur  de,  stimulus  of  expedition,  16;  com 
mission  and  titles  of,  41:  narrative  of  voyage,  41.  48.  49;  delay  in  settinc 
forth,  41.  42  :  to  govern  Cap  Rouge.  43  ;  meets  Cartier  at  St.  Johns,  45  ;  lands 
colonists  at  Cap  Rouge,  40-47;  fortifies  Cap  Rouge.  47;  renames  Canada,  47' 
severity  of,  47-48  ;  explores  the  Saguenay,  48  ;  on  Island  of  Orleans.  49  ;  re- 
turns to  Cap  Rouge.  48.  49;  inefRciency  of,  49-50;  failure  of,  51,  68;  leader 
in  French  colonization,  ()7  ;  titles  transferred  to  La  Roche,  68;  method  of 
colonization  too  costly,  78-79. 

Rohinciiu.  Rene,  sieur  de  Becancourt,  sides  with  iiabitants,  286;  commercial  treaty 
of,  356. 

Rochcmontcix,  Camille  de,  -Tesuit  historian,  cited  on  origin  and  object  of  Relations, 
314  note;  gives  the  exercises  of  the  Jesuit  college,  470;  Lcs  Jesuits  et  la 
Xdiivclle  France  an  XVlIe  sicclc,  469. 

Rogation  Smidai),  observance  of,  328. 

Rohault,  Rene,  Jesuit  novice,   bequest  of,  to  Jesuits.   253. 

Rolfe,  John,  marriage  of,  176. 

Roman  Catholic  Church,  political  influence  of,  11-12;  arrogation  exemplified  by 
Bull  of  Alexander  VI.,  14  ;  pretensions  of,  asserted  in  New  France.  1 7  ;  cele- 
bration of  JLnss.  30.  33,  323;  observances  of  fasts  and  festivals.  38.  317-318. 
319-320,  321-322,  325,  327,  328.  341-342,  374  note,  415,  426;  factor  in  French 
exploration,  39;  issues  created  by  European  revolt  against,  62-64;  effect  upon 
orders  of  schisms  in.  114;  causes  of  failure  in  Canada,  200;  attractive  and 
enduring  qualities  of.  248-249;  opposed  to  liquor  trafhc,  252  (see  also 
IJ(luor  traffic)  ;  sanctions  marriages  between  French  and  Indians,  264  ;  as- 
sumes political  supremacy,  304;  organized  at  Quebec,  351  (see  also  Laval)  ; 
rivalry  of  orders  in,  388  ;  effect  on  Canada  of  revival  in,  408-410  ;  controversy 
over  bishopric  of  Canada,  436  (see  also  Laval)  ;  wealth  of  orders  a 
cause  of  popular  discontent,  478,  479  ;  parochial  system  of,  489.  See  also 
Canada,  Church  of.  also  Jesuits,  Recollets. 

Roquemont,  Claude  de,  one  of  Hundred  Associates,  endeavors  to  relieve  Quebec. 
185;  captured  by  Kirke,  185-186.  209,  211  ;  news  of  his  defeat  in  Paris.  193; 
sends  to  Quebec  to  reconnoitre,  201  ;  incorporator  of  Company  of  Hundred 
Associates,  207;  signs  charter,  209;  commands  fleet,  211. 

Rouen,  France,  colonists  from  prisons  of,  41,  42;  fishing  industry  of,  69-70;  mer- 
chants in   commercial   associations,   73,   lOS,   111,   127,   209;   Champlain  anr 


588 


INDEX. 


Pontgrave  at,  95  ;  action  of  parliamout  of,  on  king's  decree,  108-100,  124  ; 
Cliamplain  enters  protest  at,  13S;  baptism  of  Huron  convert  at,  176;  claims 
episcopal  jurisdiction  over  Canada,  410.  410  note,  4,'i6  ;  diocesan  claims  rep- 
resented by  Queylus.  413,  410:  opposes  Laval,  417.  Anhircs  of.  70. 

RouiiMcr, ,  sails  for  France,  145  ;  bearer  of  letters  to  Champlain,  149. 

Riiio^xilknt,  annexed  to  France,  15. 

Uouticr,  GuiUaumc,  captured  by  Iroquois,  353. 

Roxbvnj,  Mass.,  Druillettes  at.  307-308. 

Jtoi/croft,  Thomas,  testimony  of,  216. 

Roij's  BuUetin,  cited,  370  note. 

Royeye, ,  Sieur  de,  left  in  charge  of  colony  at  Cap  Rouge.  48. 

Rue  (VAiguiUon,  origin  of  name,  332-333  ;  highway  to  Rocollet  monastery,  332-333, 
498. 

Rue  sous  le  Fort,  site  of  hahitation.  164:  in  1710,  496  note. 

Rupert,  Prince,  fits  expedition  for  Hudson  Bay,  516;  Governor  of  Hudson  Bay 
Company,  516;  region  named  for,  516. 

Rl/sn-icJi.  peace  of,  established,  309. 

Sable  Island,  La  Roche's  colony  on,  TO.. 

Sayard  (Throdat).  Gabriel.  Recollet  missionary  and  historian,  on  sectarian  quar- 
rels, 74;  describes  habitation,  89;  historical  limitations,  118-119.  133;  pic- 
tures early  Quebec,  119-133;  ignores  Champlain,  134,  135;  text  of  Canadian 
bill  of  grievances,  152.  153  :  arrives  in  Canada,  164  ;  disapproves  of  French- 
men adopting  Indian  customs,  166;  ignores  Mme.  De  Champlain,  167;  visits 
France  to  complain  of  Huguenots,  169-170;  reasons  given  by,  for  failure  of 
Recollets  in  Canada,  170;  distrusts  .lesnits,  171.  172;  narrow  views  of,  174; 
excites  fears  of  colonists,  182-183  ;  tonnage  of  "  Le  Coquin,"  191  ;  virtues  of 
Solomon  seal,  191  ;  on  preservation  of  church  property,  198  ;  holds  Huguenots 
responsible  for  loss  of  De  Caen's  ship,  198-199  ;  Histoirc  de  Canada,  134,  135, 
164. 

Saguenaij  region,  confused  with  Upper  Lake,  32 ;  fabulous  treasures  of,  37 ; 
sought  by  Roljerval.  48  ;  sought  by  Champlain,  99-100  ;  difficulty  of  protecting 
fur  trade  of,  2CS. 

Sagueuaij  River,  Cartier  at,  24,  44,  68;  fur  trade  of,  51,  68,  70,  99,  117;  explored 
by  Champlain,  78  ;  northwest  passage  sought  through,  270. 

Sailors,  Indian  trade  of  French,  51  ;  daring  of  French,  65;  social  status  of,  328. 

"Saint  Andre,"  Plague  stricken  vessel,  352,  353. 

Saint  Angel,  letter  of  Columbus  to.  9  note. 

Ste.  Angele  (Angela  Merici  of  Brescia),  founds  Order  of  Ursulines.  258.  See  also 
Frsulines. 

"Ste.  Anne,"  vessel  sent  against  English  at  Hudson  Bay,  518:  cargo  levied  on, 
518. 

Ste.  Anne  de  Beauprv,  parish  organized.  421  ;  church  built,  421. 

Ste.  Anne  de  la  I'erade  River,  Champlain  meets  Indians  at,  90. 

St.  Barnabe  (Barnabas),  labor  permitted  on  fete  of,  321. 

St.  Bartholemctv,  massacre  of,  113. 

St.  Tienoit,  priests  of  order  of,  entitled  "  Dom,"  30. 

St.  Bernard,  Anne  (le  Cointre)  de.  Hospital  nun.  character  of,  258:  arrival  In 
Canada.  261-262. 

St.  Bernard.  Marie  de  la  Troche  de  (St.  .Toseph,  Marie  de  Savonnier  de  la  Troche 
de).  Frsuline.  chosen  for  Canada  mission.  260. 

St.  Beuve.  Madeline  de,  influence  on  T'rsulines,  258. 

St.  Bonavcnture  de  Jesus,  Marie  (Forestier)  de.  Hospital  nun,  character  of,  258; 
arrival  in  Canada,  261  262. 

St.  Charles  River  (St.  Croix,  Little  River,  La  Petite  Riviere),  Cartier  winters  on, 
24-25,  35,  87.  89,  174  ;  named  St.  Croix,  24-25.  144  ;  renamed  St.  Charles,  25, 


INDRX.  58c) 

144;  topography  of,  25-26.  35,  87;  called  La  Petite  Riviere  (Little  River), 
87.  142,  143,  172;  Indians  at.  88;  RecoUet  monastery  on,  141,  142,  178  (sit 
also  Notre  Dame  des  Anges)  ;  Iroquois  on,  100-107;  Jesuit  mission  on,  174, 
177,  178  (sec  also  Notre  Dame  des  Anges)  ;  Kirlve's  emissaries  on,  184  ;  Hos- 
pital nuns  on.  2(51  ;  Ursulines  on,  261. 

St.  Croix  liiver.     See  St.  Cliarles. 

St.  Dominic  (ilc  Guzman),  death  of.  U.S.     Sec  o'.so  r>omiuicans. 

"  St.  Eiicnnc,''  vessel  from  Honfleur  with  Recollets.  112. 

Sainte  Foji.  Louis  (Amantachc)  dc,  Huron  convert,  struggle  for  possession  of, 
176;  baptism  of.  170. 

St.  Foil.  Maisonneuve  and  Montmagny  at,  273;  boat  building  at.  273;  Hurons 
established  at,  498.     Sec  also  Notre  Dame  de  la  Foyo. 

St.  Friineis  d'.issisi,  character  of,  112;  death  of,  113.  Sec  also  I'''ranciscans, 
Kecollets. 

St.  Francis  Xarier,  instructions  to  missionaries  cited,  314  i7orf;  images  of,  319; 
foimds  Hindustan  mission,  473.     See  also  .Tesuits. 

St.  Gcrmain-en-Laye.  France,  treaty  of,  212  note.  210.  221-222. 

Ste.  Helen,  Island  of,  origin  of  name  of  name,  110. 

"  Sle.  Hilene,"  vessel  to  be  returned  by  English,  222 

St.  Tfjnace,  Marie  (Guenct)  de.  Hospital  nun.  character  of,  258;  arrival  In  Canada, 
201-262. 

St.  lynacc,  Huron  mission,  destroyed  by  Iroquois,  300. 

St.  Ifjnatitts.  images  of.  310. 

St.  Jean,  Huron  mission,  destroyed  by  Iroquois,  301. 

"St.  Jean,"  vessel  of  Champlain's  fleet,  228. 

■S^.  Jean  Fiancois,  Que.,  population  of,  370. 

Saint  Joachim,  technical  school  at,  480,  486  note;  Laval  at.  481.  480;  scholarship 
founded,  480. 

St.  John  of  Malta  (earlier  St.  .John  of  .Jerusalem),  ISIonfmagny  knight  of  order  of, 
244.  500  ;  Noel  de  Sillei-y,  knight  of,  253  :  cross  of,  5u0. 

St.  John  the  lia/iiist.  bonfires  at  festival  of.  328. 

St.  John's,  X.  F.,  Roberval's  fleet  at,  45;  Iberville's  capture  of,  301. 

St.  Joseph   (patron  saint  of  Canada),  festival  of,  248-249,  253. 

St.  .Toscph,  mission  of.     See  Sillery. 

"  St.  Josepli.''  vessel,  sails  from  Dieppe,  200-201;  compared  to  "Mayflower."  261. 

St.  Laurence,  Gvlf  of  (Oolf  des  ('hiitean.K),  not  discerned  by  Cabots  or  Cortereals, 
15:  entered  by  flshermen.  10:  su)ipi)sed  to  be  the  Marc  Indicum,  20--1.  22; 
Indians  of,  52.  54  ;  Kirke  and  De  Roquemont  in.  209  ;  poachers  in,  208  ;  Deny's 
>nap,  10. 

St.  Lawrence  Rirer  (Great  River,  River  of  Canada),  supposed  route  to  Asia.  9, 
105;  Cartier  on,  9,  20.  23.  30-31.  34-35,  37.  40-41,  51;  topography  of.  3'>31. 
35  ;  Indians  of.  harass  colonists.  40  ;  Roberval  on.  40.  51  :  Indi.in  annals  of. 
51-02  (see  also  Hochelaga,  Hui-ons,  Iroquois.  Stadacona)  ;  French  traders  on, 
68,  82.  83,  05  ;  described  by  Champlain.  72-73  :  De  Monts'  monopoly  on.  82. 
83,  05,  lofi;  boundary  between  English  and  French.  01;  abandoned  by 
French,  92:  free  trade  on,  05,  08-00,  1012.103.  104.  105,  121.  127.  110-141, 
177,  305;  Recollets  in  villages  on,  110-117:  Indians  of.  war  on  Iroquois.  170; 
region  of.  granted  to  Company  of  Hundrr^d  .Associatf^s.  208  ;  trading  privileges 
of.  218,  221:  Iroqpois  route.  175.     Sec  also  Companies,  Fur  trade. 

St.  Louis.  Huron  mission,  destroyed  by  Iroquois,  300. 

St.  Louis,  suburb  of,  409. 

St.  Lusson,  Simon  Francois  Daumnnt.  Sieur  de,  sent  to  establish  trading  posts, 
390. 

St.  Malo.  France,  voyages  of  fishermen  of.  10-20  ;  Cartier  sails  from,  21-22.  24.  42  ; 
Cartier   returns   to,    22,    39 ;    remains   of   Cartier's   ship    in    museum    at,    20 ; 

38 


S90 


INDEX. 


Indians  baptized  at.  40 ;  merchants  of,  oppose  trade  monopolies,  69,  S3,  07, 
1U2,   lOS-lUi);   claim   right  to  St.   Lawrence  trade   through  Cartier,   lO'J-103; 
enteriii-ise  of  traders  ot,  10-1,  105.  loS,  lO'J.     See  also  Commercial  Companies. 
Stv.  Marie.  .Jcamic   (,iitiii)li)   dc.  Hospital  nun,  death  ot,  liG'J. 
tit.  Mark,  feast  of,  3li7-oi.s. 

i^t.  Martin, ,  instructor  at  Jesuit  College,  469. 

tit.  Mary,  Huron  mission,  refugees  from,  30:i!. 

St.  Maurice  liiicr,  44.  48;  explored  by  Cartier,  32;  desired  route  of  Champlain, 
99  ;  trade  center,  117  ;  Jesuit  lauds  on,  232 ;   ores  of,   3S5.     Sec  also  Three 
Rivers. 
St.   MiclHul,  feast   of,   32S. 

,S^.  Miclui  Brook,  (artier  at,  24-2r> ;  description  of,  25-26. 
St.  JS'icholas  Hfirhor,  Cartier  at,  28. 
St.  Paul  street,  86,  496  note. 
St.  Peter  street,  S6,  406  note. 
"  St.  Pierre."  vessel  of  Champlaiu's  fleet,  228. 
"St.  Pierre,''  vessel  sent  against  English  at   Hudson  Bay,  518;  cargo  levied  on, 

518. 
St.  Pierre,  lishing  sloop  from,  used  to  transport  RecoUcts. 
St.  Pierre  du  Lac,  Que,  Indian  population  of,  370  note. 
St.  Rcfjis,  Que,  Indian  population  of,  370  note. 
St.  Pouch,  suburb  of.  25  .  origin  of.  499. 
St.  Sauvcur,  suburb  of,  origin  of  name.   407. 

St.  Sauveur  de  Thurij,  parish  in  Normandy,  I.c  Rucur  from,  253. 
Saint  Simon,  Louis  de  Bourroi,  Due  de,  disparages  Frontecac,  405.  456. 
St.  Stanislas  street,  site  of  "  Jesuit  Woods,"  475. 

St.  Sulpice,  Seminary  of,  at  Paris,  founded,   272;  tribute  to,  410-411;   Montreal 
branch,  equipment  of.  408.     See  also  Sulpicians. 

St.  Terre, ,  sent  to  France  for  supplies,  47. 

St.  Therese.  Hudson  Bay  post,  seized  by  French,  518. 
St.  Urhain,  Que.,  Indian  population  of.  370  note. 
Ste.  Ursula,  patroness  of  Ursulines,  258. 

Saint  yallicr,  .Jean  Baptiste,  Bishop  of  Canada,  Recollets  transfer  property  to, 
143,  443  ;  appointed  bishop.  395  ;  builds  church,  398  ;  opposes  presentation  of 
Tartufie,  402  403  ;  objects  to  freedom  of  Canadian  manners,  405  ;  encourages 
monks,  444  ;  takes  charge  of  clergy  fund,  448  :  opposed  to  powers  of  Seminary, 
479  ;  introduces  classical  course  into  Farm  school.  486  ;  a  prisoner.  487  ;  op- 
poses Laval,  4S7  ;  impressions  of  Canada.  487-488;  sails  for  France,  488; 
captured  by  English.  488.  509;  quarrels  and  character  of.  488-499. 
St.  Vincent  de  Paul,  director  of  Duchess  d'Aiguillon,  257;  influence  on  Mme.  de 

la  I'eltrie.  259. 
Salem,  Mass.,  Druillettes  at,  309. 
'•  Salemandc."  vessel  of  Company  of  Associates,  148. 
Salieres,  Henri  de  Chapelas,   Sieur  de,   colonel    of  Carignan   regiment,   arrives   In 

Canada,  378. 
San  Domingo,  discovery  of,  8. 

Sandys,  Sir  Pdirin,  charter  obtained  by,  for  Plymouth  Company,  157. 
"Santa  Maria,"  vessel  of  Columbus's  fleet,  dimensions  of.  25. 

Sanlein, ,  agent  of  Company  of  De  Caen,  arrives  at  Quebec.  162. 

Satadin,  Indian  tribe,  location  of  village.  34  ;  conspire  against  Donnecana,  38. 
Sanlt  St.  Loni.1   (Grand  Sault),  Champlain  at,  109,  110;  fur  trade  of,  110,  121  ; 
Hurons  at,  120;  Iroquois  capture  Recollet  at,  160.     Sec  also  Lachine  Rapids. 
Sault  de  Ste.  Marie.  Nicolet  at,  270;  post  established  at.  390. 
Saviynon,  Huron  lad,  trusted  to  Champlain,  100. 
Savonarola.  Jero>nc,  self-sacrifice  of.  11. 


INDEX. 


591 


Scandinavia,  effect  of  Reformation  in,  02. 

Schuyler,  John,  envoy  from  Albany,  entertained  by  Frontenac,  399. 

Scotchman,  death  of,  at  Quebec,  132-133,  152. 

Scotland,  effect  of  Reformation  in,  62. 

Scnrvif  (mal  de  terre).  among  Carticr's  colonists,  29-30,  36;  among  Robcrval's 
colonists,  47;  at  Quebec.  89  90,  12G;  at  Three  Rivers,  240. 

Seal  fishinc/,  inaugurated,  329. 

Secular  clcryy,  functions  of.  14?.;  oppose  encroachment,  388;  of  Montreal,  400- 
401;  of  Quebec,  401,  4U7-4(i.s  ;  popular  affection  for,  412,  444;  leave  .Jesuit 
quarters,  429  ;  jealous  of  monastic  orders,  443-444  ;  seminary  established  for. 
444  ;  popular  feeling  against,  446 ;  tithes  payable  to,  447 ;  provisions  for 
support  of,  447-448,  448  nolc,  478-479;  parochial  system  of.  489;  incor- 
ruptibility of,  505.    See  also  Jesuits,  Recollets,  Roman  Catholic  Church. 

Sec  of  Rome.     Sec  Roman  Catholic  Churcli. 

Seignclay, ,  Marquis  de,  French  secretary  of  state,  creates  clergy  fund,  448. 

Scigncurcs,  importance  of  under  feudal  system,  233-234,  239  ;  position  of  Governor 
of  Canada  among,  234,  236,  237;  duties  of,  235,  264;  relation  of  ccnuilaircs 
to,  235,  236-237,  239  ;  homage  paid  by.  236,  237,  238  ;  fail  as  colonists.  238, 
265  ;  rights  of,  conferred  on  members  of  commercial  company,  377.  Sec  also 
Feudal  system,  Land. 

Seigneuries ,  a  holding  under  feudal  tenure,  80,  237  ;  of  Notre  Dame  des  Anges, 
172;  Giffard's  (of  iVauport),  235-2:56,  238;  tenure  of.  236;  abolition  of  ten- 
ure. 237,  493  note;  granted  prior  to  1640,  264;  of  Beaupre  granted  to  Chef- 
fault,  264  ;  of  Diichesse  d'Aiguillon,  265  ;  of  Godefroy,  266  :  I.auzon,  265,  334  ; 
Montreal  Island,  271,  334,  410.  453;  La  Citiere,  334;  Gaudarville  (Godar- 
ville),  334;  La  Prairie,  334,  478;  Chine,  334;  Levis,  3.34;  hold  by  Jesuits, 
478.  Sec  also  Commercial  Companies,  Feudal  system,  Jesuits,  Land,  Sul- 
picians. 

"  Seine,"  vessel  captured  by  Fnglish,  509. 

Selkirk,  Thomas  Douglas,  fifth  earl  of,  opposed  by  Hudson  Bay  Company,  123. 

Seminaries.  See  Lesser  Seminary  (Petit  Seminalre),  Seminary  (Seminaire  des 
Missions  Etrangeres).  St.  Sulpice.  Seminary  of. 

Seminary  (Seminaire  des  Missions  Etrangeres),  site  of  garden,  223,  495,  497; 
established,  444,  466  ;  tithes  imposed  for  support,  444-448 ;  census  of  inmates, 
463-464 ;  purpose  of,  466 ;  curriculum,  466 ;  educational  system  compared 
with  that  of  Jesuit  college.  477  ;  Cathedral  chapter  to  be  selected  from.  479, 
483-484  note;  to  control  parish  priests,  479,  4S3-4S4  note;  loyalty  of  stu- 
dents, 479-480  ;  constitution  of,  480  ;  Laval's  gifts  to,  481.  483 ;  documents 
in,  481;  buildings  and  site  of,  4S1-4S2,  494.  497.  498;  destroyed  by  (ire 
(1701),  482:  second  Are  at.  482-483:  revenues  of,  483;  scale  of  charges  at, 
4SS  note;  builds  Laval  University,  484  ;  prosperity  of.  484-485  ;  criticism  on 
wealth  of,  485;  technical  school  established,  485-487  (see  also  St.  Joachim)  ; 
incorruptibility  of  priests,  505. 

Senecas,  lifth  nation  of  Iroquois  league,  drive  Hurons  from  St.  Lawrence  valley, 
56,  58;  occupy  Island  of  Montreal,  56;  descendants  of  Stadacona  Indians, 
56,  58;  join  Iroquois  consolidation,  58-50,  60;  Huron  hatred  of.  59;  attack 
Huron  town.  285  ;  fighting  strength  of,  361  ;  hostility  to  Illinois,  305. 

Senechaussc,  emplacement  de  la,  granted  for  Recollet  church,  442. 

Sennetaire,  — — ,  de,  commandant  at  Fort  Richelieu,  absent  from  post,  315. 

Seven  Islands,  Cnrtier  at,  23. 

Sevcstrc,  Cliavlrs,  daughter  married,  324. 

Sezart,  Jean,  dit  Gardelet.  conrcur  de  bois,  text  of  contract,  536-538. 

Shaftcshiiry,  Anthony  Ashley  Cooper.  Earl  of,  ability,  .363. 

Shipbuilding  at  Cap  Rouge,  48:  at  Quebec,  103;  encouraged  by  Talon,  385. 

Short,  Robert,  drawing  of.  497  note. 


59? 


INDEX. 


BiUery,  Noel  Brnlard,  Chevalier  dc,  founds  missioti  of  Sillery,  253-254. 

Sillery  (St.  Josepli),  Jesuit  mission,  first  settlement  for  sedentary  Indians,  253, 
254:  sketch  of,  253-254;  nuns  visit,  2(51-262;  Indians  pursue  Iroquois,  267; 
hospital  established  at,  200  ;  growth  of,  26!) ;  terrorized  by  Iroquois.  275.  202  ; 
hospita'  nuns  retreat  from,  2S2  ;  Indians  of,  killed,  2S5  ;  fur  trade  ethics  at. 
290,  ."20;  road  to,  201;  inefficiency  of  defenders  of,  203;  Jesuits  at,  .'"l.". , 
Indians  of,  at  church  fete,  317  ;  site  of  old  chapel  at,  320  note;  conditions  of 
grant  to,  ."23  ;  fortifications  begun,  33U  ;  defenseless  state  of,  336 ;  population 
of,  357  note,  379. 

Silvy,  Antoine.  instructor  at  Jesuit  college.  469. 

Sisters  of  the  Conqrcgation,  work  of,  in  Canada,  408. 

Six  nations.     See  Iroquois. 

SJcandahietsi,  Louis,  Iroquoi-s  spy,  punishment  of,  331. 

Smith,  .fohn,  saves  .Tamestown  colony,   157. 

Smith,  WiUiam,  Ilistorii  of  Canadn.  315. 

Smithsonian  Institution,  lUiUctin,  53. 

Soissons,  Charles  dc  Bourhon,  Comte  de,  death  of,  103 ;  governor^ip  of  New 
France  transferred  to  Conde,  103.  104;  powers  conferred  on  Champlain  by, 
104-105,  137;  political  status  of.  107;  religion  of.  111. 

Sokoguiois  (Sokokis).  Algonquin  tribe,  kill  Christian  Indians,  285. 

Soldiers,  in  Huron  country,  284  ;  revenue  for  maintenance  of,  289,  294  ;  duel  be- 
tween, 320-321  ;  salute  Jesuits.  322  ;  social  status  of,  328  ;  punished  for  sac- 
rilege, 374  note;  number  sent  to  Canada,  392.  See  also  Carignan-Salieres 
regiment.  Militia. 

Soliman  II.    ("the  ^Magnificent  ").  sultan  of  Turkey,  alliance  with  Francis  I.,  '  4- 

Solomon's  Seal,  properties  of.  191. 

Sorhonne,  pronounces  against  liquor  traffic,  452. 

Sorel,  Pierre  de,  captain  in  Carignan  regiment,  arrives  in  Canada,  378. 

Soriart,  Gahriel,  Sulpicir.n,  cure  of  parish  of  Quebec,  422  ;  assists  at  Recollet  cere- 
mony, 442. 

Sonmande,  ,  seminarist,   founds   scholarship   and   endows   Farm   school,  486, 

487. 

Soumande,  Pierre,  Sieur  Delorme,  sent  to  represent  the  Compagnie  de  la  Baye 
d'Hudson  in  France.  519,  530  ;  in  suit  against  Gitton.  531. 

South  America,  commerce  of,  secured  by  Portugal,  67;  Recollets  in,  116. 

Spain,  rival  of  Portugal,  7,  8  ;  effect  of  aggrandizement  of,  8,  10  ;  first  colonizer 
of  .\merica.  13-14;  lands  alloted  to,  by  papal  Bull,  14,  08;  rebellious  colonies 
of,  aided  by  English,  17;  voyages  of  fishermen  of,  19;  growth  and  commerce 
of,  feared  by  France,  39-40  ;  effect  of  Reformation  in,  62  :  absolutism  of.  62- 
63 ;  early  commercial  companies  of.  66-67 ;  English  hatred  of.  a  factor  in 
colonizing,  156,  159;  traders  of,  in  French  waters,  162;  opposed  by  Riche- 
lieu, 220 ;  feared  in  Canada,  244 ;  limits  of  war  of  reprisal,  310.  See  also 
New    Spain. 

Spirituals,  sub-order  of  Franciscans,  113. 

Stadacona,  Indian  town  (later  Quebec),  located  by  Cnrtier's  captives.  23;  first 
seen  by  Europeans.  24  ;  Cartier  at,  32,  42 ;  described,  34,  52  ;  disease  in,  36  ; 
hostile  gathering  at,  45  ;  in  alliance  against  French,  52  ;  Champlain  at,  55  ; 
Imown  as  Quebec,  55,  55  note;  site  of,  87.     See  also  Quebec. 

Stadacona  Indians,  cultivate  European  plants,  20;  oppose  Cartier,  28,  37,  46.  56- 
57  ;  manners  and  customs  of,  32-33  ;  Cartier's  professions  to.  38  ;  sedentary 
and  wandering.  52  ;  relations  with  Iroquois,  54,  56,  58,  60 ;  relations  with 
Ilurons.  57,  58.  60.     See  also  Hiirons,  Iroquois,  Quebec. 

Stcrnatas.  Indian  tribe,  village  of.  34. 

Stuart,  Sir  James,  capture  of,  221. 


INDEX. 


593 


Sully,  Maximilian  clc  Bcthnne,  Due  de,  disapproves  of  the  oolonization  of  Canada, 
154. 

Sulpiciatis,  religious  order,  acquire  rights  of  Montreal  Company,  272,  410  ;  acquire 
Island  of  Montreal,  272.  410,  450,  52(5;  to  he  used  against  .Jesuits,  .'!S5 ; 
Jesuits  jealous  of,  3SS  ;  austerity  of,  400-401  ;  arrival  in  Canada,  408 ;  wealth 
of,  410;  survival  of,  410;  opposed  by  De  Mezy,  453;  Seminary  of,  at  Mont- 
real, 468.     iS'fC  altso  at.  Sulpice. 

Suite,  Benjamin,  cited,  297,  342,  410,  413. 

Su^c,  treaty  of,  212,  212  note. 

Sivcdcs,  French  alliance  with,  244. 

SyncHc,  length  of  term  of  office  of,  280 ;  privileges  of,  280.  294,  200  ;  election  of, 
291  ;  appointment  of,  known  at  Quebec,  326  ;  Louis  XIV.  desires  suppression 
of,  375  ;  suppressed  by  D'Avangour,  428. 

Tadoiisac,  center  of  Indian  trade,  51,  105  ;  trading  post  established,  70  ;  Pont- 
grave  at,  70,  99.  101  ;  excessive  cold  of,  71  ;  fur  trade  of.  72,  73,  lOO,  175, 
229,  328;  Champlain  at,  77,  00.  94,  96  99,  101,  109,  110,  128,  140,  150; 
poacheis  at.  77-78,  9(5,  99:  monopoly  of  trade  of,  granted  to  De  Monts,  82; 
criminals  taken  to,  87;  expense  of  port  at,  101;  free  trade  at,  105;  1^'Ange 
at,  110,  arrival  of  Recollets  at,  112;  better  supplied  than  Quebec,  112;  ar- 
rival of  Morrel's  ship  at,  125  ;  Pontgrave  seeks  supplies  at,  132,  146  ;  prin- 
cipal port  of  New  France,  140  ;  Pontgrave  leaves  ship  at.  149,  150,  151  ;  De 
Caen  at.  150,  152;  religious  quarrels  at,  162,  177;  trading  company's  em- 
ployees at,  175;  Kirke's  fleet  at,  183.  185,  195;  Kirkes  remove  from,  218; 
arrival  of  ship  "  St.  Joseph  "  at,  261 ;  English  explorer  at,  270  ;  present  of 
fish  from,  324;  Iroquois  descend  on,  357;  post  abandoned,  35(  ;  Le  Caron 
opens  school  at,  462  ;  Albanol  starts  for  Hudson  Bay  from,  516.  See  also 
Commercial  Companies,  Fur  trade. 

Taffanel.  See  La  Jonquiere. 

Taifjnoac/ny,  name  of  Indian  lad  captured  by  Cartier.  23 ;  guides  Cartier,  27 ; 
sketch  of,  27-28 ;  warn  Indians  against  Cartier,  28 ;  refuses  to  accompany 
Cartier,  29  ;  visits  Cartier,  32  ;  negotiates  with  Cartier,  38 ;  seized  by  Cartier, 
38-30  ;  fate  of,  40.     See  also  Domagaya. 

Tailla,  Indian  tribe,  village  of,  34. 

Talon.  Jean  Baptiste,  Intendant  of  New  France  (1665-1668),  prudence  of.  375; 
appointed  intendant,  378;  arrives  at  Quebec,  378-370;  tariff  published  by, 
383 ;  ability  of,  384 ;  policy  inspired  by,  384 ;  instructed  to  circumvent 
Jesuits,  384-385 ;  manufactures  encouraged  by,  385 ;  sends  prospectors  to 
Lake  Superior,  386;  eucourages  expansion,  300;  returns  to  I<'rance.  (l(i6S) 
304.  440,  (1672)  436,  454;  to  investigate  charges  against  De  Mezy.  432; 
opposed  to  Laval,  433,  435  ;  holds  Jesuits  responsible  for  action  of  converts, 
433  ;  secures  return  of  llecoUets,  440  ;  suspends  prohibitive  acts  on  sale  of 
brandy.  454  ;  advises  study  of  navigation.  460  ;  at  Jesuit  college.  471  :  builds 
first  brewery,  500,  510;  characteristics  of,  500;  deputes  Jesuits  to  watch 
English,  516;  Jean  Talon  cit(Kl,  512  note. 

Taniruay,  Ahhe  (Jyprien.  Diet.   Geii('ol(t(ii<ii(e,  cited.   219. 

Taxes,  severity  of,  in  France,  478;  not  levied  in  Cauada,  478.  522  note.  Sec  also 
Tithes. 

Temiseaminguc,  Que.,  Indian  population.  370.  note. 

Tesserie,  ,  examines  ores,  3S5. 

TheatHeals,  at  Quebec,  325,  401-403,  489.     See  also  Ballet. 

Theft,  Instances  of,  47,  321,  329.     Sec  also  I'unishments. 

TMiniiiis-Cardaillac,  Pons  <lc  LansU'ie.  Marechal  de,  acts  for  Coud6.  124.  139; 
demands  salary  due  Conde,  127,  130. 

"  The  Tree/'  321  :  sketch  of.  322  note. 

Thirty  Years'  War,  effect  of,  in  Canada,  244,  270. 


594  INDEX. 

Thomas,  ,  a  Huguenot,  abjures  heresy,  321. 

Three  Dotirgs,  purpose  of,  373  note. 

Three  Kivvrs,  original  country  of  Iroquois,  54-55  ;  Montagnais  join  Champlain  at, 
96,  07:  Indian  fair  at,  120,  131.  148-149,  162;  Le  Carou  and  D'Oibeau  at, 
120;  riiamplain  at,  120,  121;  Pontgrave  at,  120,  149,  150;  liostile  Indians 
at.  ]28:  .Tesuit  mission  at,  130,  240,  287.  315.  331.  336,  462;  Roule.  131; 
Guers  sent  to,  to  watcli  rival  traders,  145  ;  Indian  council  at.  170.  283-284  ; 
Jesuit  lands,  230,  323 ;  Brebeuf  and  Daniel  at.  232 ;  firearms  found  with 
Indians  of,  245  ;  Montmagny  at.  245,  247,  283  ;  arrival  of  Hurons  at.  247  ; 
seigneurial  grants  near,  204  ;  Iroquois  near,  265,  266.  275  ;  dissatisfaction  at, 
279,  280;  syndics  of,  281,  289.  L99,  326;  fur  trade  at,  281,  284,  287.  300; 
salary  of  Governor  of,  294.  299 ;  troops  for,  294,  336,  337 ;  weakness  of, 
298,  315;  Iroquois  defeated  at,  300.  349;  T.allemant  at.  320,  324;  duel 
at.  320.  321  ;  Duplessis-Bochart  killed  at,  336  ;  attempt  to  fortify,  3.36  ;  at- 
tacked by  Iroquois,  33('>,  337,  349  ;  Buteux  starts  from,  336  ;  Lambert  at,  337  ; 
protected  by  Montreal,  364  ;  earthquake  at,  367 ;  courts  established,  374 ; 
population  (1666).  379;  first  school  in  Canada  at.  462;  Ursulines  at,  466. 
Set;  also  Commercial  Companies. 

Thwaites,  Reiihen  Gold,  edition  of  Jesuit  Relations  cited,  307  note,  312,  367. 

Tihaiit,  ,  French  sea  captain,  Champlain  witli,  101,  104. 

Tilly, .  Dclisle  de.  Commandant  at  Fort  Bourbon,  537. 

Tin,  use  of,  for  roofs,  512. 

Tiontates.     Sec  Petuns. 

Tithes,  popular  view  of,  440  :  for  support  of  seminary.  444-445,  478-479 ;  ordi- 
nance of  1063,  445;  before  the  Council.  445,  447.  448.  448  note;  text  of  ordi- 
nance, 445;  opposed  by  habitauts,  445-446,  447;  ordinance  of  De  Tracy.  447; 
manner  of  payment.  447:  decree  of  the  king,  447;  ordinance  of  1707,  448, 
449,   509.     .S'f'e  also  Laval. 

Tohaceo,  cultivated  at  Quebec.  35. 

Torcapel,  Jean,  priest,  arrives  in  Canada,  408  :  appointed  euro  of  parish  of  Quebec, 
421-422. 

Tortlesillas,  treaty  of.  14. 

Toscanelli,  Palo  del  Po~.:o  dei,  Florentine  astronomer,  advises  Columbus.  8,  13. 

Toslcs,  Pierre  de,  remains  in  Quebec.  198. 

Tondamans   (Tsonnontoiians),  Indian  tribe,  location  of,  32,  59  note. 

Toulouse.  France.  41.  42;   inquisition  at.  113. 

Tours,  Franee,  Champlain  secures  edict  at.  139;  value  of  its  llvrc,  175  note; 
Marie  de  I'lncarnation  in  convent  at.  259  ;  nuns  of,  chosen  for  Canada  mis- 
sion,   260. 

Tracy,  Alexandre  de  Prouville,  Marquis  de,  peace  made  by,  with  Iroquois,  352, 
383;  to  command  the  royal  troops  in  Canada,  378.  383;  visits  West  Indies, 
378  ;  arrives  in  Canada.  378  ;  registers  edict  establishing  West  India  Com- 
pany, 378  ;  campaign  against  Iroquois.  383  :  returns  to  France.  383  ;  to  recon- 
cile civil  and  ecclesiastical  powers,  383,  435  ;  to  investigate  charges  against 
De  Mezy,  432  ;  ordinance  on  tithes.  447. 

Trade,  effect  of  monopolies  in.  on  colonists,  18.  279,  294;  titles  offered  to  traders, 
66,  208-209  ;  i^olicy  of  Henry  IV..  95  ;  reciprocity  treaty  between  New  Eng- 
land and  New  France,  303,  304-305,  310,  311,  312:  treaty  of  Becancour, 
35G  ;  opportunities  of  New  England,  382-383  ;  fostered  by  Talon,  385  ;  forbidden 
with  New  England.  492;  tariff  rates,  511-512;  Quebec  exports.  522.  See  also 
Commercial  Companies,  Fur  trade    Liquor  traffic. 

Prefort,  ,  Roehelle  trader,  desires  to  accompany  Champlain.  100. 

Tronquet,  ■ — ■ — ,  delegate  to  France.  287  :  in  church  procession,  326. 

Tronson.  ,  Sulpician.  recommends  Saint   Vallier.  488  note. 

Troyes,  Chevalier  de,  expedition  against  English  at  Hudson  Bay.  520,  523. 


Turgeon,  ,  Bishop,  property  bnnohf  iiy,  4f)S. 

Turnips,  remedy  for  scurvy,  37.  4(). 

Tuscaroras,  Iroquois  tribe,  sixth  nation  of  league,  361. 

Ursulinc  Convent,  Qiiehcc,  site  of  garden  of,  87;  Bernieres.  administrator  of, 
250;  site  chosen,  2(51;  picture  of,  2S2  ;  destroyed  by  fire  (10.")<t).  2S2.  :'>.il, 
(1686)  465,  4ns  ;  opened  to  Huron  refugee's,  303,  351-352;  fortified  against 
Iroquois,  354-355;  inmates  of  (1(>S1),  i(!4  ;  nurses  sent  from,  to  Tliree 
Ilivers,  466  ;  site  of,   498. 

Ursulinc  Convent,  Meauv,  France,  founded  l)y  Mmo.  I)e  Champlain.  167. 

Ursuline  Convent.  Tours,  France,  Marie  de  I'Incarnatiou  in,  250-260;  interest  in 
Canada  missions.  260. 

Ursvlines,  order  of  nuns,  founding  of,  114.  258;  devotion,  250,  282,  408;  founder, 
258 ;  oblect,  258  ;  slvetch  of,  258  ;  sail  for  Canada.  261  ;  arrive  in  Canada, 
26 1-262.  260,  407;  open  school  in  Quebec,  262;  lack  pupils,  263;  change 
dwelling,  282 ;  liouse  built  for,  Iiy  Mme.  de  la  PeUrie.  282 ;  influence  of, 
282-283,  408  ;  shelter  Huron  refugees.  303  ;  lands  of,  318.  323-321.  404,  405, 
504;  religious  and  social  observances.  310.  320:  servants  of.  fight  duel,  320; 
chaplain  of.  trades  in  furs,  326  ;  mistal<e  of.  320  ;  besieged  by  Iroquois,  354- 
355;  Vignal  cliapiain  to,  407-408;  educational  work  of.  465-466;  protest 
against  encroachment  on  property,  504  ;  Chronitine  de  I'Ordrc  des,  167. 

Utrecht,  peace  of,  effect  on  Fludson  Bay  fur  trade,  520 

Valois.  Louis  de.  Jesuit,  recommends  St.  'N'allier,  488  note. 

Vauhan.  Sebastian  le  Prrestre,  Marshal  of  France,  military  engineer,  consulted  on 
fortifications  of  Quebec,  502. 

Vauhougon.     Sec  Chauvigny. 

Vaudois.     See  ^^'aldenst's. 

Vaudreuil,  PhiUppe  de  Riganlt,  IMarquis  de,  (Jovernor  of  Canada  (1703-1725), 
burial  place  of,  242,  356;  cited,  385;  social  laxity  under  administration  of, 
405-406. 

Vaudreuil,  Louise  Elizaheth  (nee  Joyhert),  Marquise  de.  sketch  of,  406. 

Velasco,  — — ,  Spanish  captain,  reputed  first  to  ascend  St.  Lawrence,  cited  by 
Charlevoix,  19. 

Ventadour.  Henri  de  Levis,  due  de,  Viceroy  of  Now  France,  atithoiizes  Champlain 
to  seize  free  tradei'S,  141:  succeeds  Montmoronci,  170;  cliaracter  of.  170; 
awards  Huron  lioy  to  .Jesuits.  176;  succeeded  by  Richelieu.  206. 

Vera:::sano,  Giovanni  da.  Italian  navigator,  stimulus  of  expedition  of.  16. 

Veras,-:fino.  Sea  of.  location,  20-21  ;  sou.ght  by  Cartier,  22;  Canada  and  Ilocbelaga 
Islands  in.  24. 

Vespucci.  Amerifio,  in  More"s  Utopia.  12;  exponent  of  Italian  influence  in  settle- 
ment of  America.  13,  14-15. 

Vicomte.  a  holding  under  feudal  tenure,  80,  237.     Sec  o/so  Feudal  system. 

Vicar-apostolic.  i)owers  of,  419  note. 

Viol.  Kieolas,  Kecollet,  arrives  in  Canada.  164;  with  Tlurons.  165-166;  drowning 
of,  175-176;  affection  for  Indian  child.   176. 

Vienne,  Marie,  death  of,  110;  burial,  122. 

Viijer.  Louis,  courevr  de  hois,  text  of  cortract.  536-538. 

Visjer-Temiscouala,  Que.,  Indian  population.  .".70  note. 

Vifinal  (Vifjnard).  ani'.Urume.  Sulijiciau.  slain  l)y  Iroquois,  358;  chaplain  of  T'rsu- 
lines,  407-408. 

Vif/nnn.  Nicolas  de,  false  stories  of  discoveries.   100-110. 

Vif/nier. .  negotiates  purcliase  of  viceroyalty  of  New  France,  130. 

Villars.  .  Mme.  de.  sponsor  of  Huron  convert,  176. 

Villchon.  ,  Rohineau,  Sieur  de,  sent  to  France  to  consult  or   fortifications  of 

Quebec,  502. 

Villcgagnon.  Nicolas  Durand  de,  Ilugnonot  colonizer,  68. 


596  INDEX. 

Ville-Haric,  appellation  of  Montreal,  Montraagny  opposes  settlement  of,  272. 
Sec  alao  Montreal. 

Villetncnon, .  Intendant  to  the  Admiralty,  letters  to  Champlain,  147,  149. 

Villeneuve,  Mathieu  Aniiiot,  Sieur  de.  plan  of  Quebec,  481. 

Villcray,  Ruuer  de,  dismissed  from  council,  429  ;  in  Compagnie  du  Nord,  533,  535, 
53C. 

Vimont.  Bnrlhelcmy,  Jesuit,  sails  for  Canada,  261;  superior  of  Canadian  mission, 
269 ;  arrives  at  Montreal,  274  ;  succeeded  by  Lalemant.  284 ;  praises  piety 
of  soldiers,  284  :  deliberations  on  fur  trade  of  Sill^ry,  290  ;  grants  lands  to 
nuns,  318,  323;  obtains  patent  appointing  superior  of  Jesuits  vicar-general, 
413;  Relation    (1640).  241. 

Violette,  ,  shot  for  selling  brandy.  427. 

Viffjln  Mary,  intercession  asked  for  scurvy-stricken.  29-30  :  patroness  of  Quebec 
church,  249  ;  celebration  of  the  Assumption.  255-256,  263  ;  chapel  dedicated 
to.  398. 

Virginia,  colony,  tlieological  and  political  contentions  in,  17.  63;  French  captives 
taken  to,  77;  colonized  l)y  trading  companies.  84,  106.  156;  first  Indian  mas- 
sacre in,  93:  republican  tendencies  obnoxious  to  France,  137;  communistic 
constitution,  156-157;  receive  representative  government.  157-158:  progress 
compared  to  that  of  Canada.  158.  238.  265,  381 :  characteristics  of  colonists. 
159  ;  hatred  of  French  Catholicism,  159  ;  colonists  lack  enterprise,  247  :  trade 
injured  by  English  wars.  310.     See  aUo  Colonies.  Commercial  Companies. 

Voltaire  (i}seud.  of  Francois-Marie  Arouet),  commends  Jesuits,  474. 

Vvil  (Will).  Daniel,  shot  for  heresy,  425. 

Waaes.      k>ec   Labor. 

Waldenscs,  persecution  of,  113:  organization  of  religious  orders  due  to  heresy  of, 
114. 

Walker,  Sir  Hovenden,  loss  of  fleet  celebrated  in  Quebec,  398  ;  effect  of  attempt  on 
French  government,  504. 

Walloons,  settled  on  the  Hudson,  84. 

Walter,  William.     See  Walton.  William. 

Walton,  Witliam,  New  England  minister,  entertains  Druillettes,  309. 

Wainpnm,  Cartipr  crowned  with.  43. 

Water  system  of  Quebec,  493-404. 

Welliiujton.  Arthur  Wellcslrii.  Duke  of,   -idvises  fortification  of  Quebec,   504. 

Welsh  wen,  potential  colonization  of.  13. 

West  India  Islands,  mark  limits  of  Portuguese  discovery.  14:  trade  of.  2ii5.  310. 
See  also  Commercial  Companies. 

Wheat,  brought  to  Cap  Rouge.  48 :  planted  at  Quebec.  89 :  samples  taken  to 
France.  120;  sent  from  Quebec.  329:  exported,  385,  522:  corner  in.  511. 

William  HI.  of  England,  i-eferred  to  by  Frontenac,  397 :  effect  of  accession  on 
Canada,  399  :  apology  of  directors  of  Hudson's  Bay  Company  to,  517  note. 

William  and  Mary  Collrf/e.  founded.  462. 

Williaws.  Ro(/er,  victim  of  religious  intolerance,  76. 

Wilson.  Sir  Daniel,  cited.  53-54,  56. 

'Windicard  Islands^  Columbus  at,  8 

Winsloir,  Edn-ard.  London  agent  of  Massachusetts  colony.  306;  urged  to  aid  iti 
resisting  Iroquois.  308. 

Winslon-,  John.  New  England  trader,  welcomes  Druillettes,  306:  encourages  Druil- 
lettes. 309. 

WinfhrojK  John.  Sr..  Governor  of  Massachu.setts.  negotiates  with  Montmagny, 
288.  3()8  note. 

Winthroi).  John.  Jr..  Governor  of  Connecticut.  Druillettes  appeals  to,  308;  lineage 
of.  308  note. 

Wiseonsin  Hirer,  Marquette  and  Joliet  at,  390. 


INDEX. 

Witclicraft,  wise  treatment  of,  in  Canada,  425.     See  alto  riinishments. 

^Yolfey  James,  attempt  on  Quebec.  ;507. 

Wollei/  (Woolrti).  diaries,  Two  Years'  .lournal  in  New  York,  cited,  52 

^Vyandots,  brancli  of  Hurons,  53. 

Xaintongeais,  Jean  Alphonse,  pilot,  46. 

Xnricr.  St.  Francis.     Sec  St.  l^'rancis  Xavier. 

Talc  University,  founded.  462. 

Yati, ,  New  England  ship  captain,  Druillettes  with,  309. 


597 


Americana 

Catalog   of   the    Publications   of 

The  Burrows  Brothers  Company 

Cleveland,  Ohio 

(and  London ) 


Principal  Contents 

Hawortli's  Hayes-Tilden  Controversy. 

Indian  Captivity  Series,  5  volumes. 

Douglas'  Old  France. 

The  Leonard  Narrative. 

Ortli's  American  Politicians. 

Eliot's  Logic  Primer. 

PauUin's  Navy  of  tie  Revolution. 

Guardia's  Costa  Rican  Tales. 

Avery's  History  of  the  United  States. 

The  Jesuit  Relations. 

Severance's  Tlie  Niagara  Frontier. 

The  B  B  Reprints. 

Hutchins'  Topographical  Description. 

Wafer's  Panama. 


"...  the  enterprising  publishers  are  doing:  an  in- 
valuable service  to  the  literature  of  American  history." — 
The  Dial,  March  16,  '04 


II 


Barro'-a's  Ihothers  Coi/ipaiiy 


The  fo/lowing  pages  cofttam  a  list  of  the  Publi- 
catio)is  devoted  to  American  history  issued  by  7 he 
Burrows  Brotiiers  Company,  Cleveland,  Ohio. 
Prices  with  few  exceptions  are  net,  in  accordance 
with  the  regulations  of  the  American  Publishers' 
Association.  Vohnnes  preceded  by  an  *  are  in 
limited  editions. 


Alsop  (George). .  .XII 
Avery  (Elroy 

McKendree X 

Blackhawk XIX 

Boone  (Daniel)..  XIX 
Bourne  (  Edward 

Gaylord) XII 

Brady  (Cyrus 

Towr  send) ...  .XIV 
Budd  (T]iomas).XIII 
Denton  (Daniel).  .XII 
Douglas  (Jamesj.  .  .  IV 
Douglas  (Stephen  A.) 

XVII 

Eames  (Wi'berforce) 

VIII 

Eastburn  (Robert)  XII 

Eliot  (John) VIII 

Gill)ert  (Benjamin)  X\" 
Guardia  (Ricardo 

Fernandez) V 

Haworth XVIII 

Hicks  (  Frederick 

Charles) VII 

How  (Nehemiah)  XVI 
Hutchins  (Thomas) 

VII 

Jeffries  (Ewel)  ..XVI 
Jesuit  Relations.  .  .  IX 
J(jhnst(m  (Charles) 

XVII 

Jones  (Charles  C,  [r.) 

XIX 


Leeth  ( John).  ..  .XVI 
Leonard  (Zenas).  .  .  IV 
Lir  coin  (Abraham) 

XVII 

Mereness  (Newton  D.) 

.XII 

Miller  (John)... XIII 
Miner  (William 

Harvey) XIX 

Neumann  (Felix)  .XII 
Orth  (Samuel  P.'..  Ill 
Paltsits  (V^ictor  Hugo) 

XII-XVI 

Paullin  (Charles  Oscar) 

VHI 

Ra1inesque(C.  D.).XI 
Severance  (  Frank  H.) 

X  XV 

Shepard  (Frederick  J.) 

XIII 

Sparks  (Edwin  Erie) 

XVII 

Spears  (John  R.)..XV 
Stevens  (Frank  E.) 

XIX 

Thomas  (Gabriel)  XIV 
Thwaites  (Reuben 

Gold) IX-XVI 

Wafer  (Lionel)  ...VI 
Wagner  (W.  F.)...IV 
Winship   (George 

Parker) VI 

Wolley(Chtrles)..XII 


Catalog  of  Their  Pubhcations  1 1 1 

Orth  (Samuel  P.).  Five  American  Politicians. 

Burr  —  Diuifjlas  —  Clay  —  Clinton  —  Van  Buren. 
Size,  l^xbW,  447  pages,  photu<j;'avure  portraits, 
cloth     {postai^e  .10)  $2.00 

American  Politics  examined  in  the  light  of  present 
day  administration  may  be  said  to  comprise  two  distinct 
features,  i.  e.,  personality  and  principle.  The  machinery 
of  modern  politics  had  its  inception  in  the  desire  of  certain 
men  to  carry  out  issues  and  fulfil  amliitions  hip:hly  neces- 
sary to  their  own  advancement  and  success.  There  have 
been  many  distinct  successes  in  this  peculiar  field  but  it 
has  been  Dr.  Orth's  object  to  show  the  besinninss  of  this 
essentially  /\merican  phase  of  political  life.  Each  of  the 
five  Rreat  names  contributed  some  special  feature. 

To  Aaron  Burr  may  be  given  the  credit  of  the  first 
American  political  machine.  It  has  survived  the  century 
as  Tammany  Hall.  His  romantic  life  and  tragic  death  add 
a  double  interest  to  the  story  of  his  political  career. 

DeWitt  Clinton  was  the  founder  of  the  Spoils  System, 
the  earliest  and  most  pernicious  of  all  forms  of  graft. 
The  life  of  the  man  was  a  series  of  paradoxes:  the  strong 
and  weak  points  constantly  in  contrast  one  with  the  other, 
and  his  final  transformation  from  a  "spoils"  politician  to 
one  of  our  greatest  constructive  statesmen  forms  an  in- 
structing as  well  as  interesting  chapter  in  our  history. 

The  svstem  originated  by  Clinton  was  deftly  carried 
by  another  to  Washington.  The  story  of  Martin  Van 
Buren  is  one  of  careful  "plotting  and  clever  manipulation; 
his  ousting  of  .Tackson  to  become  President,  and  the 
methods  used  by  him  to  avoid  snares  and  pitfalls  is  as 
fascinating  as  a  romance. 

A  IVIaster  and  Victim  of  Compromise  and  Coalition, 
Henry  Clay  stands  pre-eminent.  Five  times  he  stood  for 
the  presidency,  either  before  the  convention  orthe  people, 
only  to  be  defeated.  For  half  a  century  he  was  a  leading 
actor  on  our  political  stage:  the  organizer  of  a  powerful 
party:  the  originator  of  great  issues 

One  other  name— Stephen  A.  Douglas,  Defender  of 
State  Rights,  must  be  included,  as  denoting  a  man  who 
lead  the  old  Democracy  into  the  land  of  promise  and  the 
realm  of  nationalism.  His  life  was  given  to  that  period 
which  determined  for  us  whether  we  were  to  be  a  nation 
or  a  confederation. 

The  book  is  written  in  a  lucid,  straightforward  manner, 
the  author's  chief  object  being  to  bring  out  the  foremost 
political  episodes  in  ihe  lives  of  the  five  men  under  con- 
sideration. 

The  growth  of  the  spoils  system  and  party  machinery; 
the  origin  of  the  caucus  and  its  decline;  the  rise  and  de- 
velopnient  of  the  convention  plan,  and  other  details  of 
modern  politics  are  treated  exhaustively  from  an  historical 
standpoint  and  moreover  the  fundamental  thought 
throughout  the  book  is  to  show  how  all  the  diverse  factors 
combined  to  aid  in  the  development  of  the  nation  and  how 
politics  and  statecraft  have  united  continually  in  forming 
and  preserving  the  Union. 


IV  Burrows  Brothers  Company 

Douglas  (James,  LL.D.)  Old  France  in  the 
New  World.  Quebec  in  tlie  Seventeentli  Century. 
Seciind  Edition.  Size,  6Xx8;V;  payes,  597;  por- 
traits in  photogravure  and  man>  full  page  half-tones, 
buckram,  gilt,  e.xtra     {postage  .12)  $2.50 

An  admirable  book  on  the  iiiaking  of  Canada  under 
the  French  rule,  and  especially  of  the  beginninfisof  Uue- 
bec,  Dr.  Douglas  having:  made  a  particular  study  of  the 
old  town  and  its  associaticms.  A  scholarly  and  open 
minded  account,  fully  illustrated,  of  the  development  of 
that  great  country  to  the  north  of  us.  With  careful  and 
comprehensive  index. 

"The  author  follows  the  fortunes  of  the  French  settle- 
ment on  the  St.  Lawrence  with  a  Hrm  g^rasp  of  the  philoso- 
phy of  its  history,  and  with  many  entertaining  details  .  .. 
and  is  a  valuable  addition  to  the  increasing  literature  of 
the  subject. — A^.  Y.  Tribune. 

"The  illustrations,  plans,  maps  and  facsimiles  are 
numerous,  exceedingly  well  executed,  and  historically 
valuable." — Clcvetaiui  Plain  Dealer. 

"It  contains  a  wealth  of  information,  part  of  which  is 
new  and  what  is  not  is  told  in  such  an  attractive  manner 
as  to  give  it  all  the  charm  of  mi\i\\.y ." —Quebec  Chronicle. 

"Dr.  Douglas  adds  a  very  substantial  and  comprehen- 
sive volume  to  the  literature  of  the  subject  ...  in  fact  he 
has  achieved  a  work  of  value."— A^ew  York  Times  Satur- 
day Revie-w. 

"The  history  of  Canada  is  well  worth  reading,  and  the 
book  contains  one  of  the  best  indexes  ever  seen  in  a  vol- 
ume of  this  kind,  tilling  some  fifty-four  pages.  The  work 
is  handsomely  printed  and  bound,  and  the  frontispiece  is 
a  photogravure  of  the  study  for  a  portrait  of  Cardinal 
Kichelieu.  by  Phillippe  de  Champaigne,  in  the  National 
Gallery." — Bosto?i   'Transcript. 

"Old  France  in  the  New  World"  will  be  invaluable  to 
all  those  who  wish  to  study,  in  the  formative  period,  the 
people  who  now  form  one-third  of  the  population  of  the 
Dominion." — Manitoba  Free  Press. 

Descriptive  circular  on  application. 

*Leonard  (Zenas).  Narrative  of  Adventures, 

1839.     Edited  by  W.  F.  Wagner.     Size  6.\9,  pages 
317;  map,  portraits,  ciotli      [postage  .14)  $5.00 

Since  Washington  Irving  gave  us  "Capt.  Bonneville" 
and  "Astoria"  the  interest  in  the  Great  West  has  been  un- 
abated. Lewis  and  Clark  were  the  pioneers  through  the 
country  which  Leonard  describes  and  here  for  the  first 
time  is  presented  in  accurate  print,  one  of  the  most  re- 
markable records  of  early  western  adventure  (on  the  prai- 
ries and  in  the  Rockies)  ever  exi)erienced  by  individuals. 
The  first  description  of  the  "I'osemite  is  here  given,  of  the 
redwoods  of  Mariposa  and  the  big  trees  of  the  (then)  Cali- 
fornia  Territory.    Leonard    became    a    member   of   the 


t  'ata/oxr  of  Their  PiiblicatiiVis  \ 

Walker  Ex i)edition  and  later  in  1S:!4,  joined  Capt.  Bonne- 
ville at  Salt  Lake,  becoininfj  intimate  witii  the  celebrated 
Joe  Meek  and  the  reneKacle  Edward  Rose,  of  Astorian 
fame. 

The  introduction  and  very  numerous  and  excellent 
annotations  are  by  Dr-  W.  F.  Wagner.  There  are  maps, 
fine  portraits,  and  an  index  of  great  value  The  original 
work  is  one  of  extreme  scarcity  and  its  authenticity  is  in 
noway  to  be  doubted.  A  limited  number  of  copies  are 
offered  for  sale.  The  jjresent  and  coming  interest  in  (he 
Oregon  country  adds  greatly  to  the  value  of  this  book. 

"The  journal  tells  a  great  deal  about  the  western 
Indian  Tribes  "—.-^wf/vVu;;  Hist  Rcvieiv. 

"This  reprint  is  fully  and  capably  annotated.  The 
value  of  the  publication  is  increased  by  an  exhaustive 
index  .  .  .  and  a  map  showing  the  location  of  the  Cali- 
fcirnia  missions  in  1769-18'ii  "—Cedar  Rapids  Repul'lican. 

"A  good  account  is  given  of  the  California  territf>ry, 
its  climate,  soil,  mountains,  streams,  crops  and  native 
Indians." — N.  V.  Times  Sat.  Reviexv. 

Guardia  (  Ricardo  Fernandez)  Cuentos  TIcos. 

Short  stories  of  Costa  Rica.  Translated  from  tlie 
Spanish  by  Gray  Casement,  with  an  introduction 
and  many  half-tone  illustrations.  Size  5  x  7|^; 
pages  293,  c'oth,  {postpaid)  $2.00 

Costa  Rica  has  its  own  literature  and  the  above  collec- 
tion—a typical  one— of  Central  American  stories  has  been 
carefully  and  smoothly  translated  by  (jray  Casement,  a 
close  student  of  the  Latin -American  life,  and  one  who 
makes  a  strong  bid  for  the  future  of  these  southern  re- 
publics. Guardia  is  considered  the  leading  exponent  of 
belles-lettres  in  Costa  Kica  and  his  work  has  exerted  a 
strong  inrtuence  over  his  countrymen.  Here  for  the  first 
time  he  is  put  in  English  and  the  illustrations  and  lengthy 
introduction  by  the  translator  make  the  book  unic|ue  in 
the  position  which  it  tills. 

"Some  of  the  stories  are  humorous,  some  tragic;  but 
all  show  power  and  present  life  vividly," — Ne-iv  York  Sun. 

"Senor  Guardia  is  considered  one  of  the  leading  lit- 
erary men  of  Costa  Kica.  if  not  of  Central  America. 
The  unusual  merit  of  he  short  stories  m  this  collection 
makes  the  reader  desirous  of  knowing  more  of  his  work. 
Mr.  Casement,  who  is  responsible  for  the  translation, 
has  performed  a  difficult  task  in  a  very  satisfactory  man- 
ner."—AVw  Orleans  Picayune 

"Mr.  Casement  has  been  able  to  retain  in  his  transla- 
tion the  effect  of  the  language  in  which  the  stories  were 
written.  He  has  kept  the  idiomatic  terms  of  expression 
as  nearly  as  possible  and  the  touches  of  local  color  make 
one  of  their  most  pleasing  ^\u2i\it\&s."—Cleve/ai!d  Leader. 

"Here  is  a  unique  book  indeed  *  *  *  Tales  like  these 
are  not  to  be  found  elsewhere."— 77/e  Emporia  {Kansas) 
Bulletin. 


\'l  Bttrro-n'S  Ih-otliers  ('o/ipany 

"The  stories  are  not  only  ?ood— they  are  very  Rood. 
In  fact  they  will  remind  the  reader  of  the  brilliant  sketches 
of  Selma  Lagerlof,  the  Swedish  impressionist.  One  feels 
after  reading  the  book  throug-h  that  he  has  been  makingr  a 
voyage  of  discovery,  that  he  has  never  known  Costa  Rica 
before  more  than  a  g'eoprraphical  name  and  a  [lossible 
space  on  the  map  of  that  neck  of  woods  known  as  Central 
America — bnt  that  now  he  knows  it  well.  *  *  *  TJie 
short  novels  that  Mr.  Casement  has  translated  for  us  are 
cut  as  clean  as  a  cameo.  There  is  not  an  amateurish  line 
in  them." — Cleveland  To'a'ii  Topics. 

"Mr.  Casement's  account  of  the  little  republic  is  more 
thorough  and  satisfactory  than  any  we  have  met  with."— 
Cleveland  Plain  Dealer. 

*  *  *  "In  -Kl  Claver  (The  Pink)  is  told  the  story  of  a 
country  pirl  who  vainly  loves  a  well-to-do  Rentleman  of 
the  city;  althoug^h  here  and  there  reminiscent  of  Castilian 
story  tellers,  the  tales  and  the  style  in  which  they  are  re- 
lated, make  one  wish  to  know  more  of  Senor  (juardia  and 
his  works."— AVu'  York  Ttmes  Sat  Revieix'. 

Descriptive  circular  on  application. 


*Wafer  (Lionel).  A  New  Voyage  to  America. 

Edited  by  George  Parker  VVinship.  Size  6x9, 
payes  212,  two  folding  maps  and  three  folding 
plates,  cloth     {postage  .12)  $3.50 

A  reprint  of  one  of  the  most  valuable  early  treatises 
on  Central  America  and  the  Isthmus.  Published  in  1699, 
the  volume  has  been  one  of  grreat  rarity  until  now  pre- 
sented with  all  the  oritrinal  plates,  maps  and  a  new  chart 
of  the  country  as  it  is  today.  Invaluable  as  a  contribution 
toward  our  canal  literature  and  the  annotations  which 
have  been  added  Ijy  Mr  Winship,  relating  to  the  ethnol- 
og:y  and  anthropoloey  of  the  country,  greatly  enhance  its 
worth.    Edition  of  500  copies 

"The  publishers  have  done  their  full  share  to  produce 
a  book  quite  in  keeping  with  their  well  established  repu- 
tation. The  original  edition  of  the  work  is  so  scarce  that 
students  .  .  .  have  hitherto  had  little  opportunity  of  con- 
sulting it." — American  Anthropologist. 

"In  the  elegant  reprints  to  which  the  Burrows  Brothers 
Co..  Cleveland.  Ohio,  has  devoted  itself,  timely  is  Lionel 
Wafer's 'New  Voyage,  etc'  The  very  competent  editor, 
Mr.  George  Parker  Winship  .  .  .  has  supplemented  the 
text  of  the  narrative  with  notes  drawn  from  buccaneer 
literature  of  the  time.  ■  .  The  original  illustrations  are 
given  in  facsimile,  together  with  the  British  Admiralty 
map." — The  Nation. 

"The  work  is  not  only  one  which  should  be  in  every 
library  of  Americana,  but  is  highlv  interesting  to  the  lay 
reader."— C.  F.  Lummis,  in  Out  West. 

"The  introduction  and  annotations  of  the  reprint  are 
valuable  contributions  to  history  and  anthropology."— 
Boston  Transcript. 


Catalog;  of  'J'lu'ir  ruhlicatiojis  \'  1 1 

"As  an  example  of  the  bookmaker's  art,  this  reprint  is 
almost  ideal  and  the  editorial  work  fully  bears  out  Mr. 
Winship's  reputation  for  careful  scholarship."— .-/w/^Wa/w 
Hist.  RevieTsj. 

"Mr.  Winship's  contribution  is  a  scholarly  piece  of 
work."— iV.  Y.  Times  Sat.  Revie-is.'. 

"A  delighttul  story  of  old  buccaneerinfj  days,  told  liv 
a  real  buccaneer  .  .  .  His  account  should  be  read  with 
interest  now  that  the  Panama  canal  .jromises  lo  become  a 
realit3\"— A^.  }'.  Sun. 

*Hutchins  (Thomas).  A  Topographical  Des= 
cription  of  Virginia,  Pennsylvania,  Maryland, 
etc.  Edited  by  Frederick  Cliarles  Hicks.  Size 
^yk  X  Qy%,  pa;j:cs  143,  foldin^r  maps,  portrait  and 
plates,  cloth  $4.00 

On   handmade    deckle    edge    paper,    super 

extra      {postai^e  .i6)  $6.00 

Thomas  Hutchins,  the  author,  occuriies  a  unique  place 
in  the  history  of  American  cartography,  being  tlie  only  in- 
cumbent of  the  civil  office  of  "(iet)grapherof  the  United 
States,"  the  position  ceasing  to  exist  after  his  death  in 
178!t. 

While  directed  by  him  there  were  executed  the  first 
public  surveys  under  the  auspices  of  the  Government. 
He  is  entitled  to  commendation  not  only  because  of  this 
fact  but  for  the  reason  of  his  honorable  connection  of  over 
twenty-two  years,  as  an  oflicer  in  the  British  army,  eigh- 
teen of  which  were  given  to  the  Engineer  Department. 

His  observations  covering  the  entire  southern  and 
western  country  from  West  Florida  to  the  Lakes,  are  em- 
bodied in  several  maps  and  two  books,  the  earlier  of  which 
is  now  offered  to  the  public  in  an  accurate  reprint.  The 
prefatory  remarks  indicate  that  the  volume  is  intended 
more  particularly  to  explain  the  larger  map  entitled  "The 
new  map  of  the  western  parts  of  Virginia,  Pennsylvaniae 
Maryland  and  North  Carolina,"  etc.,  published  separately 
but  of  the  same  date  as  the  book.  This  chart,  3,5  x  4,t  inches, 
in  size,  together  with  the  folded  maps  included  in  the 
volume,  are  reproduced  with  absolute  accuracy.  Strange 
as  it  may  seem,  the  life  of  Hutchins  who  in  many  respects 
was  vitally  connected  with  the  history  of  the  American 
Colonies,  their  struggle  for  independence,  and  their  de- 
velopinent  after  it  was  attained,  has  never  been  written. 
As  an  introduction  to  the  volume,  the  editor,  Frederick 
Charles  Hicks,  formerly  of  the  Lilirary  of  Congress,  has 
prepared,  entirely  from  original  sources,  an  extended  ac- 
count of  the  man,  supplemented  by  a  bibliography  of  his 
published  and  unpublished  writings  The  Toposrraphical 
Description  is  copiously  annotated  and  the  whole  pro- 
vided with  a  complete  index.  Included  is  the  particularly 
important  and  exceedingly  scarce  Journal  of  Patrick 
Kennedy,  together  with  a  Hst  of  tlie  different  nations  and 
tribes  of  Indians  then  scattered  throughout  those  parts. 
As  an  addition  to  our  cartographical  literature  the  work  is 


VIII  Burrows  Brothers  Co7npa7iy 

most  acceptable,  but  in  presenting  a  life  drawn  from  offi- 
cial documents,  unpublished  correspondence  and  gov- 
ernment records,  many  new  facts  are  for  the  first  time 
made  public  and  much  of  importance,  heretofore  un- 
known, is  Riven  to  the  student  and  historian. 

"Mr.  Hicks  has  made  scholarly  use  of  the  opportunity 
which  he  had  for  several  years  as  a  member  of  the  staff  of 
the  Congressional  Library." — Bulletiti  Auier.  Geog.  Society. 

"The  pulilishers  whose  reprints  of  nefzlected  and 
well  nigh  forarotten  historical  documents  deserve  not 
only  praise  but  substantial  recognition,  have  done  well  in 
reviving  the  memoirs  and  work  of  Hutchins.  .  .  .  We  re- 
gret that  the  edition  is  limited,  as  it  is  a  book  which  should 
be  in  every  public  library." — The  Nation. 

"An  admirable  reproduction  of  a  pioneer  survey  of 
the  Ohio  valley.  ...  It  is  a  thoroughly  creditable  per- 
formance."— A''.  Y.  Sun. 

"Mr.  Hicks  has  taken  his  task  seriously,  using  good 
source  material  and  collecting  his  information  with  com- 
mendable care  " — Anier.  Hist.  Reviovn. 

A  descriptive  circular  on  application. 

*Eliot  (John).  The  Logick  Primer.  Edited 
by  Wilberfurce  Eames.  Size  5^  x  6^-^;  papes  94, 
facsimiles,  cloth,  extra    {postage  .lo)  $6.00 

A  reprint  of  one  of  the  scarcest  pieces  of  Americana, 
of  which  there  now  exists  but  one  original  copy  in  the 
British  IMuseum.  Has  both  the  Indian  and  English  text 
and  is  edited  by  Wilberforce  Eames  of  the  Lenox 
Library.    A  few  copies  only  remain  out  of  an  edition  of  160. 

"Mr.  Eames  is  an  acknowU-dgefl  authority  on  matters 
pertaining  to  Eliot,  and  his  work  will  be  api)reciated  by  a 
large  number  of  students  and  collectors  who  have  known 
the  volume  only  by  report." — Nev.'  York  I'iiiics  .Sat.  Review. 

"The  little  book  contains  an  excellent  introduction  by 
Mr.  Wilberforce  Eames  of  the  Lenox  Library." — American 
Anthropologist. 

Paullin  (Charles  Oscar).  The  Navy  of  the 
American  Revolution.  Size  7>^  x  5;V,  pa^es426, 
frontispiece,  cloth,    (postage  .10)  $1.25 

A  volume  of  the  highest  importance  dealing  with 
American  naval  history  in  away  entirely  unlike  that  used 
by  any  previous  historian.  The  work  is  divided  into  two 
periods,  the  Hrst  dealing  exclusively  with  the  Continental 
Navy  or  the  fleets  of  tlie  federal  government,  the  second 
with  the  several  State's  navies.  Two  chapters  are  de- 
voted to  the  valuable  naval  services  of  Deane,  Franklin, 
Lee  and  Adams  in  France.  For  the  first  time  the  duties 
which  devolved  upon  Washington,  Benedict  Arnold,  the 
American  Commissioners  at  Paris  and  the  Continental 
agents  at  Washington  and  New  Orleans  are  made  clear, 
as  concerned  their  duty  toward  the  navy.  The  initial 
essay  considers  the  Continental  Navy  under  its  first  and 
only  Commander-in-chief,  Esek  Hopkins;  the  celebrated 


C  'ata/oi^  of  Tlieir  Pjihlicatiotts  I X 

iiRht  of  Jones  off  Flaml)orouph  Head;  tlie  blotxly  en- 
gagement between  the  Tnonlucll ?i\\i\  11 '(///,  and  the  iViem- 
orable  cruise  of  that  redoubtable  Irishman,  Commochire 
John  Barry,  in  178'2-178:J  are  lirietly  recounted.  A  critical 
and  exhaustive  bibhograpliy  is  contained  in  an  appendix, 
also  a  list  of  the  commissioned  otlicers  of  the  Continental 
Navy  and  Marine  Corps.  The  list  of  Sliips  sup-plements 
and  corrects  that  by  Lieut.  T.  F.  Emmons,  while  the  total 
number  of  officers'  names  given  is  'iO:i  or  exactly  two  hun- 
dred more  than  contained  in  Hamersly.  As  a  concise, 
accurate  and  readable  volume  on  tlie  subject,  treating  of 
the  period  covered,  tliis  little  book  cannot  be  excelled. 
Descriptive  circular  on  application. 

*Jesuit  Relations  (The).  Travels  and  Ex= 
plorations  of  the  French  Missionaries  among 
the  Indians.  Edited  by  Reuben  Gold  Thwaites, 
73  volumes.  Size  6x9.  Average  number  of  pages 
per  volume  300,  many,  (colored)  portraits  and 
full  page  plates  buckram,  deckle  edge.  Per  vol- 
ume $3.50 

Travels  and  Explorations  of  the  French  Jesuit  Mis- 
sionaries among  the  Indians  of  Canada  and  the  Northern 
and  Northwestern  States  of  the  IT.  S.,  lGlO-1791.  Tal<en 
from  the  French,  Latin  and  Italian  originals,  both  tnanu- 
script  and  printed,  with  a  complete  Knglish  translation. 
Portraits,  maps,  and  facsimiles.  Of  the  limited  edition 
(750  sets)  a  few  only  remain  for  Sale  Price  to  be  ad- 
vanced at  i)ublisher's  opti(»n. 

"The  most  important  historical  enterprise  ever  under- 
taken."— John  Fiske. 

•'The  beginnings  of  American  literature."— A//(?nfry 
World. 

"The  greatest  literary  event  of  the  year."— C/i/Vagw 
Tribune. 

"Of  the  greatest  importance  for  the  student  of  history 
and  the  student  of  Indian  manners"— OzV/t:. 

"The  documents  on  which  is  based  the  early  history 
of  America  "—Az/rra/w/v. 

"A  work  no  library  should  fail  to  have  on  its  shelves 
^Canadian  Bookseller. 

"Among  our  first  and  best  authorities." — Dial. 

"The  most  important  historical  undertaking  of  recent 
years  "— /.  A''.  Lamed 

"It  makes  an  epoch  in  the  historical  literature  of  North 
America." — American  Histoiical  Revieiv. 

"The  most  valuable  addition  to  earlv  American  his- 
tory that  the  present  decade  will  sqq."— Buffalo  Enquirer. 

"The  most  important  addition  to  the  shelf  of  access- 
ible American  \\'\sU)r\."—Lite>ary  World. 

"An  inmiense  boon  to  succeeding  generations  (and 
consequently  will  be  called  for  much  more  largely  in  a 
few  years,  when  it  will  be  unobtainable)."— 77/.?  Month. 

Descriptive  circular  on  application. 


X  Biir/vws  Brotho's  Compa)iy 

Avery  (EIroy  McKendree).  A  History  of 
the  United  States  and  Its  People.  12  volumes, 
size  ^)i  X  9><,  about  400  pages,  per  volume,  col- 
ored maps  and  plates,  cloth,  super  extra  $  6.25 
Half  morocco  $12.50 

Full  levant  morocco  $17.50 

In  the  treatment  of  his  vast  and  complicated  subject, 
the  author  has  succeeded,  to  a  remarkable  degree,  in  com- 
bininfj  simplicity  with  fullness,  at  the  same  time  preserv- 
ing the  proper  relation  of  parts  to  each  other  and  to  the 
whole,  and  quite  certainly  no  work  has  yet  appeared  that 
has  so  masterfully  studied  the  art  of  condensation.  In 
accomplishing  this  Doctor  Avery  has  given  color  and 
lucidity  to  his  narrative.  It  takes  time  to  thus  write  his- 
tory from  the  standpoint  of  exclusion  as  well  as  inclusion, 
but  the  sure  result  is  that  the  ideas  are  not  lost  in  a  mere 
jumble  of  words. 

"The  wealth  of  colored  maps  is  especially  commend- 
able."—ZzV^wo'  Digest. 

"Even  a  cursory  turning  of  the  leaves  for  purposes  of 
examination  constantly  presents  a  temptation  to  pause 
and  read  a  bit  here  and  \\\^xt.''— Brooklyn  Eagle. 

"A  work  that  cannot  fail  to  attract  the  public  attention 
and  to  compel  the  favorable  judgment  even  of  critics  who 
are  prone  to  look  askance  at  the  popular  history."— j5w/o« 
Transcript. 

"A  work  which  will  take  high  rank  with  the  histories 
of  our  country.  .  .  .  Dr.  Avery  writes  in  a  clear,  vigorous 
style  and  his  narration,  void  of  confusing  reference  notes, 
is  admirable," — Boston  Herald- 

"There  is  certainly  need  of  a  popular  history  of  the 
United  States,  better  proportioned  and  more  authoritative 
then  Bryant  and  Gav,  and  more  comprehensive  than 
Fiske.  This  need  Dr.  Elroy  M.  Avery  has  sought  to  sup- 
ply in  his  'History  of  the  United  States  and  its  People.'— 
The  Nation. 

Severance  (Frank  H.)  Old  Trails  on  the 
Niagara  Frontier.  Second  edition.  Size  6x9; 
pages  270,  map,  cloth     [postage  .12)  $2.50 

Drawn  in  every  instance  from  such  authoritative 
sources  as  State  Archives,  early  manuscripts,  the  Haldir 
mand  Papers  and  other  Canadian  channels,  and  woven 
together  after  infinite  research,  the  volume  has  made  fo- 
itself  a  place  in  American  local  history,  though  in  literary 
scope  it  may  be  called  universal.  The  New  York  Press 
termed  the  first  edition  "one  of  the  most  attractive 
books  of  tlie  year" 

Frank  H,  Severance,  the  author,  has  long  made  a  study 
of  Eastern  pioneer  life  and  has  worked  carefully  and  thor- 
oughly on  the  subject.  A  few  of  the  chapters  taken  in 
the  order  given  present  plainlv  the  field  covered. 

The  "Cross  Bearers"  treats  of  the  Jesuit  Missionaries 
who  came  to  the  region,  starting  with  Dallion,  in  1626, 


Cataloo-  of  T/ii-ir  Piiblicaihvis  XI 

"The  Paschal  of  the  (Jreat  I'inch"  is  an  extract  from 
the  hitherto  unknown  memoirs  of  the  Chevalier  de  Trey- 
g^ay,  of  Fort  Denonvile  (now  called  Niasara),  in  1G87,  and 
"With  Holton  at  Fort  Niagara,"  {jives  an  interestinpr  epi- 
sode in  the  life  of  Lieut.  Col.  Mason  liolton,  of  the  :«th 
Royal  Artillery. 

"What  Befell  David  Ogden"  tells  the  story  of  one  of 
the  thirty-two  persons  brought  captive  by  the  Indians 
from  1778  to  1783  to  Fort  Niagara. 

In  the  "Journals  and  Journeys  of  an  Early  Buffalo 
Merchant"  the  life  of  John  Lay,  who  went  to  that  r^Iace  in 
1810,  is  narrated.  One  of  the  most  interesting  of  all  chap- 
ters is  that  entitled  "The  Misadventures  of  Robert  Marsh" 
during  his  extraordinary  travels.  Increditable  as  it  may 
seem,  the  actual  distance  covered  by  this  individual  was 
77,000  miles,  amid  hardships  and  perils,  Indians  and  wild 
beasts,  yet  he  lived  and  told  the  tale.  <  )ne  of  the  last  but 
far  from  least  interesting  e\ents  described  imder  the  title 
of  "Underground  Trails"  is  that  portion  of  the  volume 
devoted  to  the  Hight  of  the  slaves.  As  a  summary  the 
work  may  be  called  without  hesitancy  a  contribution, 
valuable  not  only  as  such,  but  as  a  faithful  descriptive 
narration  of  events  and  filling  a  long  felt  want  in  the  an- 
nals of  border  life. 

"The  book  is  very  handsomely  gotten  up,  and  the 
story  form  in  which  the  information  is  put  will  attract  a 
public  that  is  more  than  local." — A''.  Y.  Situ. 

"...  a  work  valuable  to  all  interested  in  early  Ameri- 
can history."— M  Y.  World. 

"The  scholarship,  accuracy  and  local  knowledge 
shown  in  the  treatment  of  these  events  described  give  the 
book  more  than  a  parochial  interest."— //;£•  Nation. 

"...  many  articles  of  interest  are  to  be  found  in  the 
volume."— A^.  Y.  Tiines  Sat.  Review . 

Rafinesque   (C.  D.)     Ichthyologia  Ohiensis. 

Size  6^  X  9,  cloth,  top  oilt,  di  ckle  edges.  .  .  .  (Out 
of  print.  ) 

"It  is  therefore  a  source  of  gratification  to  note  a  ver- 
batim reprint  of  this,  the  foundation  work  on  fresh  water 
ichthyology.— O/Vrt^o  Evening  Post. 

The  "B  B"  Reprints.  A  select  series,  deyoted 
entirely  to  the  scarcest  pieces  of  early  American 
history  or  travel  and  especially  designed  for  the 
collector  or  student.  Each  volume  is  beautifully 
executed  and  publislied  in  a  style  fitting  it  to  be 
permanently  preserved.  Printed  on  Dickinson 
hand-made  paper  in  large  clear  type,  bound  in 
Burrows  boards,  deckle  edges,  uncut,  in  format,  a 
small  quarto.  Each  issue  strictly  limited  to  250 
copies,  numbered,  and  15  copies  on  Japanese  vel- 
lum, numbered  and  signed  by  tlie  editors. 


XII  Bii/ioxl's  Brotlicrs  Co?/ipauy 

Denton  (Daniel).  A  Brief  Description  of 
New  York.  Edited  ])y  Felix  Neumann.  Size 
6  X  9;  pages  63,  antique  hoards,  (out  of  print.) 

This  volume  was  written  during  1G70  by  one  Daniel 
Denton,  an  otlicer  of  the  law,  in  Jamaica,  in  Queens 
County,  on  Long  Island,  and  is  a  vivid  and  clear  descrip- 
tion of  New  York  city  and  of  the  surrounding  country, 
(including  the  present  State  of  New  Jersey)  of  that 
period.  T'he  inhabitants,  their  customs,  habits  and  con- 
ditions are  also  carefully  noted,  the  Indians  are  men- 
tioned quite  exhaustively,  and  the  whole  forms  a  narra- 
tive of  great  historical  interest. 

"Aside  from  its  physical  peculiarities,  the  subject  mat- 
ter is  of  much  interest  to  the  collector  of  Americana  or 
the  student  of  the  youth  of  his  country." — Reader  Maga- 
zine. 

"The  publishers  are  to  be  complimented  on  the  ex- 
cellent make  up  of  the  volume  "—A'.  Y.  Times  Sat.  Revie-w. 

"It  is  a  vivid  and  clear  description  of  New  York  City 
and  the  surrounding  country  including  New  Jersey,  as  it 
was  in  that  period." — Cumitlatire  Book  Index. 

"The  introduction  is  an  admirable  piece  of  biblio- 
graphical writing  in  point  of  thoroughness,  and  adds  to 
the  value  of  the  new  edition,  which  presents  a  facsimile  of 
the  title  page  of  the  original."— O/z/ZooX'. 

*Wolley  ( Rev.  Charles).  A  Two  Years'  Jour- 
nal in  New  York.  Edited  l)y  Prof.  Edward  Gay- 
lord  Bourne.  Size  6x9,  pages  75,  two  plates,  an- 
tique boards,  deckle  edges   (postage  .06)         $2.00 

The  Rev.  Charles  Wollej'  (or  Wooley)  accompanied 
Sir  Edmund  Andros  to  New  York  as  his  chaplain  in  1678. 
At  the  expiration  of  two  years  he  returned  to  England 
and  published,  in  1701,  his  "Journal,  '  to  v\  hich  much  value 
is  attached,  particularly  as  concerns  the  Indians.  His 
knowledge  regarding  the  trade  of  New  York  at  that  date, 
and  the  prices  of  furs  and  other  commodities,  is  of  great 
interest 

An  original  copy  is  worth  about  SI. 000. 

"This  reprint  of  his  narrative  is  valuable  as  there  are 
but  few  of  the  original  copies  in  existence." — N.  Y.  Press. 

"The  introductions  are  ample  and  satisfactory."— 
Awer.  Hist.  Rerietu 

"The  introduction  to  the  Journal  is  by  Prof.  Bourne, 
of  Yale  University,  and  leaves  little  to  be  desired."— 5rt'/r'/- 
more  Siui. 

*A!sop  (George).  A  Character  of  the  Pro= 
vince  of  Maryland.  Edited  by  Newton  I).  Mere- 
ness.  Ph.  D.  Size  6  x  9;  pages  113,  portrait  of 
author  and  facsimiles,  antique  boards,  deckle 
edges   [postage  .08)  $2.00 


Catalog  of  Their  Publications  XIII 

The  work  of  an  indented  servant  in  that  State  and 
gives  on  the  wliole,  a  description  of  favorable  circum- 
stances of  the  then  existing:  conditions.  The  work  in  the 
original  is  one  of  excessive  rarity,  and  this  reprint  is  in 
every  way  exact  and  correct  in  detail. 

"...  an  admirable  specimen  of  typography,  and 
makes  an  interesting  historical  document  accessible  to 
the  general  public."— A^.  Y.  Sun. 

"The  editing  by  Dr.  Mereness  leaves  little  to  be  de- 
sired."— Baltimore  Si.ii. 

"The  booklet  is  of  value  to  the  student  of  our  colonial 
history,  and  will  give  the  reader  a  whiH"  of  the  spirit  and 
atmosphere  of  the  days  of  the  Kestoratlon."— T^Ac  Cri/u: 

*MilIer  (Rev.  John).  A  Description  of  the 
Province  and  City  of  New  York.  Edited  by 
Victor  Hugo  Paltsits.  Size  ()  x  9;  pages  185,  fac- 
similes and  folding  plans,  antique  hoards,  deck'e 
edges   {postage  .og)  $2.00 

This  work  was  not  printed  at  the  time  of  its  ct)ni posi- 
tion (1695).  The  original  manuscript  found  its  way  from 
the  archives  of  the  Bishops  of  London  to  the  hands  of 
George  Chalmers,  the  Scottish  antitjuary.  It  was  sold 
afterwards  to  Thomas  Rodd,  a  London  bookseller,  who 
first  publ'shed  it  in  1843,  and  this  was  later  used  by  (jowans 
in  1862.  It  is  now  in  the  British  Museum.  The  text  is 
transcribed  in  loco,  and  a  sketch  of  the  author  given  for 
the  first  time. 

"Printing  and  binding  are  in  every  way  worthy  of 
what  the  publishers  style  'the  definitive  edition.'  "-  N.  E. 
Hist,  and  Gai'i;  Register. 

"...  a  curious  and  interesting  \o\\\x\\&.''— Brooklyn 
Eagle. 

"By  placing  these  old  prints  within  the  reach  of  mod- 
ern students  and  readers,  the  enterprising  publishers  are 
doing  an  invaluable  service  to  the  literature  of  American 
history."— 77/,f  Dial. 

"...  their  elegant  series  of  American  historical  re- 
prints " —  The  Nation. 

"The  bibliographical  and  historical  footnotes  are  very 
valuable. " — Literary  Collector. 

*Budd  (Thomas).  Good  Order  Established  in 
Pennsylvania  and  INew  Jersey.  Edited  hy  Frede- 
rick J.  Sliepard,  size  6x9;  pages  80,  fac-siiniie, 
antique  boards,  deckle  edges   {postage  .06)   $2.00 

Not  only  a  very  important  early  view  of  these  States, 
but  the  original  has  the  distinction  of  being  the  lirst  book 
printed  in  America  by  William  Bradford.  Budd  was  a 
resident  of  Burlington,  N.  J.,  in  1678,  and  an  extensive 
landowner.  The  book  gives  a  good  account  of  the  coun- 
try and  its  resources  and  wt)uld  be  today  termed  a  treatise 
written  for  the  use  of  emigrants.  A  translatit>n  of  "'i'he 
Dying  Words  of  Ockanichon,"  an  Indian   who  died  at 


XIV  Burrows  J!roi/iers   Vompany 

Burlington,  is  appended.  This  latter  tract  recently  sold, 
in  the  original,  at  auction  for  Sl,450  00,  and  Budd  for  £12.5, 
in  London. 

"The  pul)lishers  deserve  thanks  for  their  handsome 
reprint  of  a  book  which  is  accounted  among  the  very 
rarest  of  Americana." — Reader  Magazine. 

"Contains  a  great  deal  of  information,  and  Mr.  Shep- 
ard's  introduction  is  scholarly  and  full  of  interest  " — N.  Y. 
Sir  II. 

*Thomas(Qabriel.)  Pennsylvania  and  West= 
New  Jersey  in  America.  Edited  by  Cyrus  Town- 
send  Brady.  Size  6x9;  pages  83,  antique  boards, 
deckle  edges   {postage  .06)  $2.00 

Little  did  this  author  realize  the  worth  of  his  contri- 
bution, either  as  such  or  from  a  standpoint  of  financial 
value.  At  the  date  of  its  inception  and  composition,  the 
writer  is  believed  to  have  been  a  citizen  of  I^ondon,  hav- 
ing previously  resided  in  America  for  a  period  of  about 
fifteen  years,  and  the  information  contained  in  the  book 
gives  the  result  of  his  own  experience  and  observation. 
In  its  general  make-up  the  second  portion  of  the  book  de- 
voted to  West-Xew-Jersey,  is  in  everj-  waj-  similar  to  that 
preceding.  Descriptions,  exceedingly  valuable  to  the 
student  of  contemporary  history  are  lengthy  and  full  of 
rich  materia],  notices  of  the  soil  and  climate  and  particu- 
larly the  portions  which  refer  to  the  nati\  e  Indians,  are 
of  inestimable  value.  As  to  the  scarcity  of  the  original, 
little  need  be  said.  Its  present  day  market  valuation  as  a 
rare  book  is  fully  that  of  a  thousand  dollars,  one  having 
been  recently  offered  for  more  than  this  amount  by  a 
prominent  dealer. 

"The  original  is  extremely  rare  and  the  reprint, 
though  limited,  is  timelv." — Amer.  Hist.  Revien.'. 

"In  typography  and  binding  the  volume  is  notable  for 
modest  elegance." — Chicago  Evening  Post. 

All  of  the  above  reprints  contain  facsimiles  of  the 
original  title  pages,  maps  and  illustrations.  It  is  hoped 
that  eventnallv  there  will  be  included  some  rare  tracts  or 
volumes  dealing  with  many  of  the  early  States,  each  dis- 
tinctive in  itself,  and  attended  biographicaUy  and  biblio- 
graphically  by  competent  authorities. 

Other  volumes  to  be  announced  later. 

Narratives  of  Indian  Captivities.  A  series 
of  five  volumes  devoted  to  some  of  the  scarcest  and 
rarest  works  of  this  character.  As  a  collection, 
the  publishers  once  more  put  before  the  American 
public  many  accounts  of  the  adventures,  battles, 
imprisonments,  and  esca[  es  of  our  forefathers, 
which  though  published  and  read  in  days  long  past, 
are  now  almost  impossible  to  procure.  .  .  Uni- 
formity as  to  the  number  of  copies  of  each  work 


Ccita/oo  of  Their  Piihliiations  W 

prevails  thn)U,s4:h()Ut  tlie  scries,  Ixith  on  liand  made 
paper  and  vellum,  and  each  vulume  is  numhert-d. 
The  binding  of  the  set  is  a  uniform  fine  (|uality  of 
cloth,  tlie  de  luxe  copies  being  untrimmed  and 
with  paper  label. 

*Qilbert  (Benjamin).  The  Captivity  and 
Sufferings  of  Benjamin  Gilbert  and  his  Family, 

1780=83.  Edited  by  Frank  M.  Severance.  Size 
8X  X  6^;  pages  204,  map  and  four  plates,  clotli, 
extra,  deckle  edges   {postage  jj)  $3.50 

On  Imperial  Japanese  vellum  $5.00 

A  most  useful  book  to  students  of  the  Niagara  region 
and  its  history,  and  of  New  York  State  as  a  whole,  aside 
from  offering  much  in  the  way  of  extraordinary  adven- 
ture to  the  general  reader.  The  work  was  written  by 
William  Walton,  to  whom  the  facts  were  told  by  the  Gil- 
berts after  their  release.  Included  is  a  facsimile  of  two 
of  the  original  title  pages,  a  remarkable  woodcut  from 
the  first  issue  and  a  newly  drawn  map  of  the  region  trav- 
ersed, also  a  complete  index. 

"Mr.  Severance  is  just  the  man  to  edit  a  reprint  of 
this  work.  Its  publication  should  interest  local  people 
greatly." — Niagara  Falls  Gazette. 

"Their  journeyings  and  adventures  are  interesting 
and  cast  a  curious  light  on  the  frontier  life  of  the  time." — 
A'.  Y.  Sun. 

"A  straightforward,  simple,  direct  narrative.  .  .  .  " — 
Buffalo  £xpress. 

*Eastburn  {  Robert ) .  A  Faithful  Narrative 
During  His  Late  Captivity.  Edited  by  John  K, 
Spears.  Size  8X  x  hi{,  facsimile,  cloth,  extra, 
{postage  .oj]  $2.00 

On  Imperial  Japanese  vellum  $3.50 

This  is  one  of  the  rarest  of  Indian  captivities  in  the 
original,  being  exceeded  in  that  quality  only  by  Dicken- 
son's God's  Protecting  Providence,  and  Gyle's  Ottd  Adven- 
tures and  Captivity.  The  narrative  is  one  of  extreme  im- 
portance because  of  its  being  an  original  authority  relat- 
ing to  the  war  that  destroyed  the  French  power  in  North 
America.  The  excellent  character  of  the  author  and  his 
high  standing  among  the  pioneers  and  early  settlers  of 
Pennsylvania  must  also  be  taken  into  account. 

"Mr.  Spears  has  enhanced  the  value  of  the  book  by 
his  illuminating  introduction  and  his  copious  annota- 
tions.''—  Chicago  Evening  Post. 

"Eastburn's  hardships  were  severe  but  he  was  equal 
to  Vnem."  —  Nation. 

"The  narrative  is  printed  with  the  old  spelling  and 
notes." — A'^.  Y.  Times  Sat.  Review. 


XVI  Bitnv-a's  Brothers  Conpany 

*Leeth  (John),  A  Short  Biography  of — 
With  an  Account  of  His  Life  Among  the  ln= 
dians.  By  Ewel  Jeffries,  edited  by  Reuben  Guld 
Thwaites.  Size  8X  x  5|4^,  pages  70,  facsimile,  cloth 
extra   {postage  .oy)  $2.00 

On  Imperial  Japanese  \'ellum  $3.50 

Leeth's  narrative  is  from  every  viewpoint  well  worth 
the  reprinting.  The  introduction  by  Dr.  Thwaites  is 
lengthy  and  lucid,  giving  all  particulars  concerning  the 
old  fur  trader  and  his  Indian  experiences.  The  hero  him- 
self was  in  his  seventy-seventh  year  when  these  recollec- 
tions were  reduced  to  writing  by  Jeffries  and  his  memory 
was  unusually  accurate  for  a  man  of  his  humble  walk  in 
life.  The  story  is  on  the  whole  an  accurate  matter  of 
fact  recital  of  the  often  thrilling  personal  experiences  of 
a  typical  trader  and  hunter  in  the  then  Indian  Territory 
of  Pennsylvania  and  Ohio — his  numerous  expeditions,  his 
intimate  relations  with  the  savages;  and  his  captivity  and 
life  in  their  camps,  chiefly  during  the  stirring  period  be- 
tween 1774  and  1790. 

"The  story  of  his  adventures  is  a  wonderful  record  of 
hardships  and  sui?ering',  of  indomitable  bravery  and  rigid 
honesty.  —  Chicago  Evening  Post. 

*How  (Nehemiah).  Narrative  of  his  Captiv= 
ity  at  Great  Meadow  Fort.  Edited  by  Victor 
Hugo  Paltsits.  Size  S%  x  6  ^4^;  pages  72,  facsimiles, 
cloth,  extra   {postage  .06)  $2.00 

On  Imperial  Japanese  Vellum  $3.50 

The  excessively  rare  original  tract,  consisting  of 
twenty-four  pages,  was  first  published  in  Boston,  one  year 
after  the  death  of  How,  which  event  occurred  while  he 
was  a  prisoner  at  Quebec.  It  is  now  reprinted  for  the 
first  time  vebatim  et  literatim  et  punctuatim,  from  a  fine 
uncut  copy  1  the  Brinley)  in  the  New  York  Public  Library, 
with  a  lengthy  and  complete  introduction,  valuable  foot- 
notes and  an  index. 

Mr.  Paltsits  has  also  supplied  with  the  above,  a  gene- 
alogy of  the  author  and  brought  to  light  many  hidden 
facts  which,  though  known,  have  not  heretofore  been 
authenticated,  explaining  and  pointing  out  vagaries  in 
New  England  and  specially  Vermont  history,  which  will 
be  of  incalculable  assistance  to  the  future  worker  in  this 
field.  A  facsimile  of  the  orginal  title-page  is  included. 
Nehemiah  How  was  born  in  1093  at  Marlborough.  Mass., 
and  died  while  captive  in  Quebec,  May  25,  1747.  His  nar- 
rative abounds  in  interest  and  is  both  lucid  and  accurately 
written.  As  a  contemporary  view  of  New  England  and 
southeastern  Canada,  it  is  of  great  value. 

"The  setting  given  the  narrative  in  its  new  appear- 
ance is  of  the  same  excellence  as  the  other  volumes  in 
this  series  of  reprints. —  The  Dial. 


Cata/oi^  of  I'/ieir  Puhlicaiiois  X  \'  1 1 

"A  diary  of  the  twenty-eight  pages,  meager  in  his- 
torical material  but  worthy  of  a  reprint  because  of  its 
rarity." — Amer.  Hist.  Reriew. 

Opinion  ill  a  letter  from  Prof.  William  F.  Gaiwiig,  Sinit/t 
College.,  Northampton,  Mass.:  "I  have  read  it  through  with 
care  and  deep  interest, — the  latter  arising  in  part  from 
the  narrative  itself  and  in  part  from  the  way  in  which  the 
subject  is  handled,  and  clarified  by  the  editor.  The 
whole  work  seems  to  me  just  a  model  of  what  such  a 
work  ought  to  be — not  only  in  the  editing,  but  also  in  the 
form  and  typography,  including  the  very  copious  index," 
— Signed. 

*Johnston  (Charles).  Narrative  of  Incidents 
Attending  his  Capture.  Edited  by  Edwin  Erie 
Sparks,  Ph.  D.  Size  8}(  x  5^;  pages  ]o(),  fac- 
simile, cloth,  extra  {postai^e  .og)  $2.50 
On  Imperial  Japanese  Vellum  $4.00 

Altftougn  consideraDly  snorter  tnan  many  ot  the  nar- 
ratives offered  from  time  to  time  by  the  early  pioneers, 
this  volume  has  tnany  features  which  commend  its  peru- 
sal and  which  are  of  value  and  interest  to  the  general 
reader  as  well  as  the  student.  During  178'J,  at  the  age  of 
twenty-one  years,  Charles  Johnston  left  a  point  near 
Petersburg,  Virginia,  for  the  State  of  Kentucky  for  the 
purpose  of  taking  some  depositions.  His  capture  by  the 
Indians  took  place  during  the  sumnif-r  of  the  year  men- 
tioned, and  he  was  taken  into  the  present  State  of  Ohio 
and  there  kept  prisoner  until  ransomed  by  a  French 
Trader  from  Detroit.  Eventually  he  made  his  way  back 
to  Virginia  by  way  of  New  York.  Some  interesting  inter- 
national questions  of  that  day  touching  upon  the  reten- 
tion of  American  forts  by  the  British,  are  fully  and  care- 
fully treated.  Tho  sum  paid  for  Johnson's  release  was 
eventually  returned  to  the  Fi  ench  trader  by  ihe  United 
States  Government.  This  book  is  iwWy  annotated,  the 
identifications  of  all  proper  names  carefully  attended  to, 
and  full  explaniitions  given  by  Professor  Sparks,  of  the 
University  of  Chicago,  author  of  "/7/r  E.xpansions  of  the 
American  People",  '^Formative  Incidents  in  American  Dip- 
lomacy ",  etc.,  etc. 

Other  volumes  in  this  series  will  be  announced  later, 
and  will  probably  deal  more  especially  with  the  western 
country  as  we  know  it  today,  the  Rockies  and  the  Pacific 
coast. 

A  descriptive  circular  on  application. 

Lincoln  and  Douglas  Debates,  in  the  Cam- 
paign of  1858  in  Illinois.  Size  10  x75s;  pa^es 
416,  buckram    {postai^c  .22)  $3.50 

Stephen  A.  Douglas,  an  exponent  of  views  dissimilar 
and  opposed,  used  all  the  force  of  splendid  oratory  and 
brilliant  scholarship,  but  to  no  avail,  as  events  have 
proven. 


X\'1II  Jii/>-ro~u's  Bro tilers  Co/fipany 

The  speeches  during  the  celebrated  campaig^n  in 
Illinois,  and  the  two  great  speeches  of  Lincoln  in  Ohio,  are 
masterpieces  The  work  is  fully  indexed  with  great  care 
and  the  original  edition  of  1800  is  now  so  scarce  as  to  be 
practically  unprocurable. 

Haworth  (Paul  L.  )  The  Hayes=Tilden  Dis= 
puted  Presidential  Election  of  1876.  Size 
8x5^;  pages    365.     Buckram    {postage  .12) 

Net  $1.50 

Tc  the  handling'  of  this  subject  the  author  has  devoted 
an  enormous  amount  of  the  best  work  of  a  specially 
trained  historical  student's  mind,  and  while  his  method  is 
highly  complete  in  a  technical  way,  showing  thorough 
scholarship,  his  st>'le  is  also  liright,  picturesque,  and  in- 
teresting, showing  thus  .not  only  that  he  has  collected  his 
materials  with  the  highest  degree  of  thoroughness,  but 
also  that  he  possesses  the'  ability  to  co-ordinate  the  same 
and  thus  furnish  to  his  readers  something  more  than  the 
mere  building  materials  of  history — a  finished  historical 
construction.  The  author's  task  was  very  difficult.  It  is 
practically  safe  to  assert  that  up  to  ten  years  ago  it  would 
have  been  impossible,  even  with  the  best  will  in  the 
world,  to  make  so  unbiased  and  thorough  a  study  of  the 
question  as  Mr.  Haworth  has  done,  and  it  would  seem 
equally  certain  that  at  no  time  in  the  future  will  it  be  pos- 
sible to  secure  such  yj^'ryow*?/  assistance  as  has  been  given 
to  Mr.  Haworth  by  a  large  number  of  parties  directly 
connected  in  some  way  with  one  side  or  the  other  of  this 
controversj'. 


i 


Ccita/oi^'-  of  Then    rublications  XIX 

Remainders    of    Publications    Owned   or 
Controlled 

BY 

The  Burrows  Brothers  Company 

Cleveland  and  London 


*Boone  (Daniel).  A  Bibliography  of  Writ- 
ings Concerning,  liy  William  Harvey  Miner. 
Size  "%y.h%\  pa^es  82,  (inlcrleaved)  antique 
boards   {postage  .06)  $2.00 

Jones  (Charles  C. ,  Jr. ) .  History  of  Georgia. 
2  vols.  Size  9>^x6;/s;  pa^es  556+540,  portraits, 
plates,  maps,  buckram,  uncut.  ($10.00)  [express- 
a^re   <c)  $6.00 

*  Stevens  (Frank  E.).  The  Black  Hawk 
War.  Including  a  Review  of  Black  Hawk's  Life. 
Size  10>^x7>^;  pages  823,  more  than  80U  portraits 
and  views,  cloth.      ($5.50)    [postao;e  .2^)  $4.00 

Omar  Khayyam— The  Rubaiyat  of.  Newly 
paraphrased  by  Kuel  William  Whitney,  with  slight 
foreword  by  C.  C.  IVI.  Jr.  Illustrations  by  F.  H.  M. 
Size  6>^x5;  illuminated  wrappers,  in  special  en- 
velope,    {postpaid.)  $1.00 


Circulars  oj  each  of  the  above  volumes  may  be  had 
on  application. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


'990 

HK'D  LD-URL 
MAR  if  1°'^^ 

imuvun. 

HUG  2  7  7983 


wpfc  ■  fi-'*' 


OECOSH? 


^f  OCT  2  3  19pl 


30m-7,'70(N°<75s8)— C-120 


3  1158  00831  24< 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACIl  ITY 


AA    001  028  542    7 


w 

m 


